How to move your history from Budget Flow
Budget Flow writes one of the most complete export files of any budgeting app: both sides of a transfer, the exchange rate it used, and a flag on transactions that have not settled yet.
How to bring it in
- 1. Export your history from Budget Flow. You want the CSV file.
- 2. Open Money Talks, go to Settings and tap Import Data.
- 3. Choose Budget Flow from the list of apps.
- 4. Pick the file you exported.
- 5. Read the preview. Pending rows are listed as skipped on purpose, and transfers appear as one row naming both accounts.
- 6. Confirm.
The file you need
Budget Flow exports one CSV file, with full timestamps and time zone offsets.
You have the right file if its first line looks like this:
Date,Amount,Source Currency,Target Currency,Exchange Rate,Budget Book,Source Account,Target Account,Folder,Category,Payee,Tags,Notes,PendingSource Account and Target Account together describe a transfer. On ordinary spending, only the source is filled in.
Frequently asked questions
Why were some of my rows skipped as pending?
Because Budget Flow marked them that way. A pending transaction is one the bank has authorised but not settled, and the final amount can still change or the whole thing can be reversed. Importing it would put spending in your history that may never have happened. Those rows are counted and shown in the preview separately from rows that failed to parse.
Do transfers between my accounts come across?
Transfers between two accounts in the same currency do. Budget Flow fills in Target Account, so both ends are named on one row and nothing has to be matched by guesswork, and Money Talks records it as one transfer that stays out of your spending totals. A transfer between two currencies is refused instead: the file names the arriving currency but not the arriving amount, and its Exchange Rate column does not state which way round it applies. Those rows appear in the preview as skipped, with a reason.
What happens to the exchange rate column?
It is not used. A rate only means something once you know which of the two currencies it multiplies, and the file does not say. Guessing would put a wrong number in your history that reads like a real one, so a cross-currency transfer is skipped and named in the preview instead. If you have those and want them supported, send us the file: one real sample settles the question.
My dates have a time zone on the end. Is that a problem?
No. Budget Flow writes timestamps in ISO 8601 with a compact offset, like 2026-01-26T22:28:00+0100. Money Talks reads that directly. Avoid re-saving the file from a spreadsheet, which usually strips the offset and can shift dates by a day for anything logged late in the evening.
What comes across from Budget Flow
- Every transaction with its date, payee and notes
- Categories, with the folder standing in on rows where you left the category blank
- The currency each transaction was made in, so a multi-currency history stays multi-currency
- Transfers between two accounts in the same currency, kept as one record naming both
- The account each transaction came from
What does not come across
- Pending transactions - Budget Flow marks a row Pending when the money has not settled yet. Those rows are skipped on purpose: importing them would count spending that may still change or be cancelled. They appear in the preview as skipped, not as errors.
- Cross-currency transfers - Budget Flow names the currency the money arrived in but not the amount, and its Exchange Rate column does not say which direction it applies in. Rather than record a euro-to-zloty move as euro-to-euro, which would be wrong and invisible afterwards, those rows are listed in the preview as skipped. Same-currency transfers come across normally.
- Tags - Money Talks has no tags. Notes and payees come across in full.
- The budget book name - Budget Flow can keep several separate books in one file. Money Talks separates money by space rather than by book, so the book name is not carried on each transaction.
- Your accounts themselves - Each transaction remembers the account name it came from, and the preview lists the names it found. Money Talks does not recreate the accounts or their balances.
An export that names both ends
Source Account and Target Account sit next to each other in the header. On a
purchase, only the source is filled in. On a move between two of your own
accounts, both are, and that is all an importer needs to keep the transfer whole.
Money Talks records those as one transfer with both accounts named, so the money stays out of your spending totals instead of showing up as a purchase on one account and income on the other.
The one case we refuse
Budget Flow also writes Source Currency, Target Currency and an
Exchange Rate on each row. That looks like enough to carry a cross-currency
transfer, and it nearly is. What the file never states is how much arrived, and a
rate on its own does not settle it: 200 EUR at 4.30 is either 860 PLN or 46.51
EUR depending on which way the rate multiplies.
We could pick the likelier reading. We would be right most of the time, and the times we were wrong would look exactly like the times we were right, because a plausible number in your history carries no mark saying it was a guess.
So a transfer between two currencies is refused and listed in the preview with a reason, and a transfer within one currency comes across normally. If you have cross-currency transfers in Budget Flow, send us the export. One real file with a known answer in it turns this from a guess into a rule.
Pending rows, and why they wait
The last column is Pending. Budget Flow sets it while a card payment has been
authorised but not settled.
A pending amount is provisional. Restaurants add a tip after the fact. Hotels authorise a deposit they never take. Airlines authorise, cancel, and re-authorise at the final price. Import those rows and your history contains spending that never happened, in amounts that were never charged.
Money Talks skips them on purpose and tells you how many. They are listed in the preview under skipped rows with a reason, kept apart from rows that genuinely failed, so you can see at a glance that nothing broke.
If a pending transaction has since settled, export again. It comes through as an ordinary row with the real amount.
Timestamps with an offset
Dates look like 2026-01-26T22:28:00+0100: full ISO 8601 with a compact time zone
offset and no colon in it. Money Talks reads it as written.
This is another file worth not opening in a spreadsheet. Re-saving usually drops the offset, and a transaction logged at 22:28 in Berlin can move to the previous day once the time zone is gone.