How to import bank statements into YNAB (the Outflow/Inflow CSV, done right)

YNAB (You Need A Budget) prefers its direct bank connection, and when that works you should use it. File import is the fallback for banks YNAB can't link, for regions where connections are patchy, and for importing history from before you started budgeting. It reads a specific CSV, and getting the columns exactly right is the whole job.

The CSV YNAB wants

YNAB's file import expects a header row with these columns:

• Date — one consistent format.
• Payee — who the money went to or came from.
• Memo — optional notes.
• Outflow and Inflow — two positive columns. Money leaving goes in Outflow, money arriving in Inflow. (YNAB also accepts a single signed Amount column, but the split Outflow/Inflow layout is the one it documents and the one that trips the fewest people up.)

Import per account from the account → Import → File Import, then approve the transactions. Amounts must be plain numbers — no currency symbols, no thousands separators — and a real payee name is worth the effort, because YNAB's auto-categorisation and payee matching key off it.

From a PDF or bank export to that file

If you only have a PDF, convert it with a tool that re-validates dates and amounts rather than trusting OCR, and reconcile the totals against the statement's printed balances before importing. Our converter has a YNAB export that produces the Outflow/Inflow CSV directly, with the merchant identified in the payee column — which does a lot of your categorisation for you. Per-bank steps live on the converter pages.

Don't double-count

The one thing to watch: if an account is also linked directly, file-importing an overlapping period creates duplicates YNAB won't always catch. Import history only for periods the connection doesn't cover, or turn the connection off while you backfill. Merging several months first — here's how — removes the overlap before it becomes a problem.