YNAB Import

Switching budgeting apps shouldn't mean abandoning years of history. Budgero can connect directly to YNAB or read a YNAB export ZIP, then rebuild your budget — accounts, categories, transactions, and monthly assignments — in a few minutes.

Recommended: connect directly

Choose Connect directly, enter a YNAB personal access token, and select your plan. Budgero uses the token only in memory for the current import, sends it directly to YNAB, and never saves it to Budgero, browser storage, logs, or analytics. The importer performs read requests only.

The direct path avoids CSV formatting ambiguity and preserves YNAB's account types, on-budget or tracking status, closed status, exact transfer relationships, split children, and currency precision. For mortgages and YNAB-managed loans, Budgero also reuses the YNAB payment category when it can identify one unambiguously from the plan's transfers.

Before saving the budget, Budgero compares the imported result with the same YNAB API snapshot:

• every active transaction and split row must be accounted for;
• every account balance must match;
• monthly assigned, activity, and available values are compared for every category;
• Ready to Assign is compared for every month; and
• YNAB Money Movements are checked independently against monthly assignments.

Source-integrity or account-ledger failures stop the import and remove the incomplete budget. Category-history or Ready to Assign differences open a review screen instead. You can inspect the affected months and amounts, then either remove the import or choose Import anyway. Accepted warnings remain visible in Settings › Import History.

Alternative: import an export ZIP

In YNAB, open your budget settings and choose Export Budget. You'll get a ZIP file containing two CSVs — your transaction register and your budget (plan) file. Budgero accepts the ZIP as-is; no unpacking or editing needed.

Set your formats before exporting. YNAB writes the CSVs in whatever display format your plan settings use, and ambiguous formats are the number-one cause of broken imports (dates like 01/05/2025 can mean January 5 or May 1). In the YNAB web app, open Plan Settings and set:

• Date Format to 2025-12-30 (ISO — unambiguous)
• Number Format to 123,456.78
• Currency Placement to "Don't Show"

Then export. Budgero detects other date and number formats where it can, but the settings above are the only ones that import losslessly.

Do this while your YNAB subscription is active. Export access normally goes away when your subscription lapses — YNAB support may be able to help after the fact, but don't bet your history on it. Exporting first costs nothing.

What comes over

Data	Imported?	Notes
Accounts	✓	API imports preserve type and budget status; ZIP imports require type review
Category groups & categories	✓	Full hierarchy preserved; register-only categories are created and reported
Transactions	✓	Dates, payees, multiline memos, amounts — complete history
Split transactions	✓	Complete exported split groups import automatically; line categories, payees, memos, amounts, and order are preserved
Transfers	✓	Detected and recreated as proper two-sided transfers
Monthly assignments	✓	Your budgeted amounts, month by month
Starting balances	✓	YNAB's "Starting Balance" entries become opening transactions
Goals / targets	✗	YNAB's export doesn't carry them — rebuild in Budgero
Scheduled transactions	✗	Not part of YNAB's export
Flags	✗	Not carried over

YNAB's special plumbing is translated rather than copied: inflows to "Inflow: Ready to Assign" are mapped into Budgero's Income category, so your income history feeds Ready to Assign correctly from the first sync.

YNAB's managed-debt engine can apply accrued interest directly to a mortgage or loan balance without exporting a normal register transaction for it. When that happens, Budgero creates a clearly labelled Imported YNAB debt interest adjustment transaction. This keeps the account balance exact without hiding a balancing entry or changing Ready to Assign.

Imported budgets also start with the Monthly Ready to Assign calculation, which most closely matches YNAB's month-by-month behavior. You can switch calculation modes at any time under Settings › Budgeting Settings without changing transactions or assignments.

Running the import

1. During onboarding (or from Settings if your budget already exists), choose Import from YNAB.
2. For a direct import, choose Connect directly, enter a personal access token, and select a plan. Alternatively, choose Export ZIP and drop in the ZIP.
3. Review the preview and confirm. Complete ordinary splits import as Budgero split transactions; YNAB splits containing transfers are safely expanded into individual transactions. The progress screen reports source, account, category-history, and month-by-month Ready to Assign verification. If a non-fatal reporting difference remains, review it and explicitly decide whether to keep the imported budget.

If you import during onboarding, Budgero skips the setup steps the import already covered — you won't be asked to create accounts and categories you just brought with you.

The post-import checklist

Three things deserve ten minutes of attention after any import:

1. Review account types after a ZIP import. Direct API imports preserve YNAB's account types and budget status. A ZIP doesn't reliably carry account types, so verify those accounts and reassign any incorrect ones. This matters most for credit cards, since Budgero's debt handling activates per account type.
2. Review debt links after a ZIP import. Direct API imports reuse an unambiguous YNAB mortgage or loan payment category and preserve YNAB credit-card semantics. ZIP exports carry less account metadata, so verify those links using the Debt tracking guide.
3. Rebuild goals. Your YNAB targets didn't survive the trip — YNAB doesn't export them. Recreating them in Budgero takes a few minutes and the Goals guide maps YNAB's target types to Budgero's four goal types almost one-to-one.

Finally, reconcile each account against your bank once (see Accounts) to confirm balances landed where reality says they should.

If something looks off

The most common post-import surprises, in order:

• Ready to Assign doesn't match what YNAB showed — direct imports compare every month before the budget is saved and show the exact YNAB value, Budgero value, difference, and calculation inputs. If you accepted a warning, reopen it under Settings › Import History. ZIP imports cannot make this API-backed comparison, so verify account types and reconcile each account first.
• Dates or amounts look wrong — almost always an export-format issue. Re-export from YNAB with Date Format 2025-12-30, Number Format 123,456.78, and Currency Placement "Don't Show" (see above), then import into a fresh budget.
• Duplicate-looking transactions — complete contiguous Split (1/n) through Split (n/n) groups import automatically as one split transaction. Incomplete or ambiguous groups remain separate transactions so Budgero does not combine unrelated rows.
• Currency questions — YNAB budgets are single-currency, so everything imports in that currency. If you're switching to a multi-currency setup, see Budget currency before changing anything.

Your YNAB data stays untouched by all of this — the direct importer only reads through the API, and ZIP import only reads the selected file. You can re-run either method into a fresh budget if you want a clean second attempt.