Import Tip: Put Your Category in the Tag Column (it doesn't always load category from the CSV)

aolafsson

Simplifi seems to super randomly just choose a totally different category than what is in my upload CSV. Everything "Hobbies" got uploaded as "Holiday Gifts" (both custom categories of mine).

One tip to make sure things come in right, is to put your original categories into the Tag field, so it's there for you to check that things are right (and potentially bulk change).

Before you import, copy and paste the categories column to another column. Select only that column, and use Excel 'find and replace' to remove spaces and special characters. Use a CONCATENATE function in excel to join this value with your existing tags, and then copy these joint values back into the tags field, then upload. Delete all extra columns.

I'm working my way through each tag, checking that categories uploaded correctly, and then deleting the tag. Most look good, but then there are random ones where I can see no explanation for why it chose another category despite what the CSV said. This happened for the entire category. For others, dozens of transactions will be good, but then I'll see that say 2 in restaurants got set to clothing.

UrsulaA

Thanks for posting this - I am adding your link on Reddit for more detail. I may try importing all my history to a separate manual account when I have time using your approach, @aolafsson

https://www.reddit.com/r/mintuit/comments/18uni3p/different_simplifi_import_approach_just_sharing/

UrsulaA

I imported history for my banking assets before 2022 using this method and it worked! Thanks.

UrsulaA

I added a slight tweak - for the tags that have the categories, I added a Z. Example ZGroceries. In that way, when I am done checking if the import worked, I can find the tags and delete them.

UrsulaA

I imported 8,728 transactions across 13 accounts from Mint. Two accounts were bank accounts and the rest were credit cards. I used the method above and imported the bank accounts into a Mint Assets account and the credit cards went into Mint Debt.

I chose to keep the Mint history separate as I do not want the history to slow down performance in Simplifi for the accounts I use - 11 in total.

I used the notes field to specify which account the transactions belonged to. I did not import historical tags from Mint, just categories and transactions. I also ensured that I exclude the same transactions from reporting in Mint and Simplifi. My Mint Import had the Hide from Budgets and Trends category designated for the hidden transactions.

I used balance adjustments to bring down the value of Mint Assets and Mint Debt to zero to ensure Net Worth was not affected.

Tips:

If you have rules, they will override your Mint category if it is custom. Having the tags helps bulk edit and assign to your desired category. I set rules for what I use now, but such rules do not match what I did years ago. Fixed less than 100 transactions.

I ended up having to check transactions by month and year as I ended up missing 11 transactions out of a batch of 913. I could not find any pattern on the missing transactions (special characters or any other identifier).

Check the net amount of transactions by account to ensure you match what your Mint file had.

Check income and spending by year if you want to match to what your Mint file had. I used Excel pivot tables and Simplifi reports by year.

Other:

The process took me about 10 hours. It's a bit onerous to do with history (which is why I imported 2022 and 2023 only when I signed up).

If you want a one for one match by account in Simplifi, use the support article but invert the order. Link the account first and then backfill the history. Use the tags as instructed above to fix your categories and fix the bank synched transactions in the Simplifi accounts.

I did not need a one to one match by account in Simplifi, so importing all the Mint history to two accounts made sense. Also, if you prefer Mint history to overrule Simplifi downloads, import transactions to a dedicated manual account and delete the bank downloaded transactions.

Thanks @aolafsson - I would not have even ventured to import without your tips above.

UrsulaA

Another oddity on the import process - Payees from Mint that do not exist in Simplifi sometimes do not get added if the original transaction text has a # sign on it. The import seems to favor original statement text as payee sometimes.

UrsulaA

Also, some payees from the Mint import presented the issue outlined on the thread below

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/25191#Comment_25191

UrsulaA

Also, I forgot to do the step below when importing, outlined in the Reddit post.

"I'm replacing "Original Description" (bank transaction's) with the content in "Description" (my description in Mint) as Simplifi seems to be favoring the original"

I found that Simplifi indeed favors the original description versus the content in the Description column. In Simplifi, I did not go through the trouble of fixing payee names to match my Mint data except for two that came in as:

I am grateful that the original description imported correctly and I was able to fix the two payees.

Agent Sloopy

The Simplifi that I am using in the "Tag" column only has 3 choices: Tax Related, Vacation, Reimbursable ! Does yours allow you to Rename this field? It's the same for me in the phone application and on the desktop version. Simplifi is really driving me crazy at is just keeps putting transactions into the weirdest "categories" and I have to go thru each every transaction and re-catergorize it. I might as well just stick with pen and paper or my own excel worksheets. Let me know if your version is different than mine. And thank you!

UrsulaA

Looks like you have 3 default tags. You can add tags as you change a transaction.

The comments above are for Mint imports specifically.

bowgy4

@UrsulaA Is it possible that the import process cannot create new Categories, but if you create them in Simplifi before importing, then they will map correctly?

UrsulaA

The import process creates the categories, sometimes the transactions do not map properly. Hopefully the new import process fixed this.

UrsulaA

Also, when you have split transactions and you changed the date on one or more splits, you will get duplicates as Simplifi thinks the splits are separate transactions. Other users reported this behavior in Simplifi.

My question about how splits affect imports is answered. My original question.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/23244#Comment_23244