How to move your history from FinEye
FinEye writes your transactions and your accounts into the same file, one table under the other. Most readers get as far as the second header and start turning your account list into transactions. This one knows where the transactions end.
How to bring it in
- 1. Export your data from FinEye. You want the CSV file.
- 2. Do not split the file or delete the accounts table at the bottom. It is skipped for you, and editing a CSV in a spreadsheet usually rewrites the dates.
- 3. Open Money Talks, go to Settings and tap Import Data.
- 4. Choose FinEye from the list of apps.
- 5. Pick the file, then read the preview. Transfers appear as one row showing both accounts, so you can check the pairing before anything is saved.
- 6. Confirm.
The file you need
FinEye exports one CSV file, comma-separated, with a dot for decimals and two tables in it.
You have the right file if its first line looks like this:
date,type,category,description,tags,outcomeAccount,outcome,outcomeCurrency,incomeAccount,income,incomeCurrency,refundEach row has an outgoing group and an incoming group. Which of them holds a non-zero number is what makes the row a spend, an income, or a transfer between two of your accounts.
Frequently asked questions
My export has two tables in it. Do I have to delete the second one?
No. Import the file exactly as FinEye wrote it. The transactions come first, then a blank line, then a second header row and your accounts with their types and balances. A reader that keeps going treats that second header as a transaction and everything under it as more of them, which is why a FinEye export can arrive elsewhere as your real history plus one broken row per account you have. Money Talks finds the transactions table by its columns and stops there.
How is a transfer between my accounts written?
As one row with both halves filled in. An expense has a number in the outcome group and zero in the income group. An income is the reverse. A transfer has a real number on both sides, with the account it left in outcomeAccount and the account it reached in incomeAccount. Money Talks records that as one transfer with two sides rather than as a payment plus unexplained income.
I moved money between accounts in different currencies. Do both amounts survive?
Yes. Each side of the row carries its own currency, and on a cross-currency move the two amounts are not supposed to match: the gap between them is the rate you got that day. Money Talks keeps both numbers rather than storing one and recalculating the other from a rate table later.
My categories look like Food / Groceries. Which part do I get?
Groceries. FinEye writes the group first and the category second, and the category is the one you actually chose when you entered the transaction. The group is a way of tidying a long list rather than a label on the money. If you would rather keep the grouping, rename a few categories after the import; the preview lists every category name it is about to create.
Do my account balances come across?
No, and neither do the accounts. FinEye ends the file with your accounts, their types and their balances, and none of that is imported. Each transaction remembers the account name it came from, and the preview lists the names it found, so you can see your history is complete without Money Talks inventing accounts to hold it.
Does the credit card type on my account survive?
No. FinEye records whether an account is cash, a card or a credit card, and that lives in the accounts table which is not imported. Your transactions come across in full; the labels on the accounts do not.
Do I need an account in Money Talks to import from FinEye?
No. Import works without signing up. If you do have an account, Settings keeps a Delete last import row that removes the transactions from your most recent import in one tap.
What comes across from FinEye
- Every transaction with its date and description
- Categories, taking the one you chose rather than the group it sits under
- The account each transaction came from or went to
- The currency of each side, so a history in two currencies stays in two currencies
- Transfers between your own accounts, kept as one record with both amounts and both currencies
What does not come across
- The accounts table under your transactions - FinEye lists your accounts, their types and their balances at the end of the file. The preview shows the account names it found on your transactions, but Money Talks does not recreate the accounts or their balances.
- The group above each category - FinEye writes a category as a path, like Food / Groceries. The part you picked is the second half, and that is what comes across.
- Tags - A tag is a second way of grouping a transaction alongside its category. Money Talks has one, so a tag has nowhere to land that would not overwrite something.
- The refund marker - FinEye keeps a column for marking a transaction as a refund of another one. The link between the two is a FinEye idea and does not survive on its own.
- The time of day - FinEye records the minute you entered a transaction. The date is what a budget is built from, and the clock adds nothing to it.
Two tables in one file
Open a FinEye export in a text editor and you will find your transactions, a blank line, and then this:
name,type,currency,balance,includeInTotal,includeInAnalytics,archived
That is a second table with a second header, listing your accounts. It is useful information and it is not transactions, which is exactly the problem: a CSV reader has one header and reads everything after it as rows. Hand it this file and your account list arrives as transactions with no date and no amount, one for every account you have, while the reader reports only that some rows failed.
Money Talks looks for the table whose columns are the transaction columns and reads only that one. It does not care whether the accounts come first or last, so nothing here depends on FinEye keeping the order it uses today.
You do not have to prepare the file. Export it and import it.
Both sides of the money on one row
Most exports write a transaction as an amount and a sign. FinEye writes two
groups on every row: outcomeAccount, outcome and outcomeCurrency for the
money that left, and incomeAccount, income and incomeCurrency for the
money that arrived.
An ordinary spend fills the first group and leaves the second at zero. Income does the reverse. A transfer between two of your own accounts fills both.
That last case is the one worth caring about. Read a transfer as a spend and the arriving half vanishes: your savings account never receives the money, your spending for the month is overstated by the amount you moved, and no error is raised because nothing failed. It is the quietest way an import can be wrong.
Money Talks keeps the row whole, with the account it left, the account it reached, and an amount and a currency for each. If you moved money between accounts in two currencies, both numbers survive, and the difference between them is the rate you actually got.
The category you chose, not the group above it
FinEye writes a category as a path: Food / Groceries, Transport / Taxi. The
first half is the group, the second is the category you picked from it.
The second half is what comes across. A group is a way of keeping a long list readable rather than a statement about the money, and Money Talks keeps categories flat so you are not maintaining a tree to record a coffee.
The preview lists every category name it is about to create, so if you would
rather see Food than Groceries on some of them, that is a rename or two
before you confirm rather than a decision you are stuck with.
Accounts arrive as names
Each transaction remembers the account it came from, and the preview shows you every name it found. What does not happen is Money Talks creating those accounts, giving them types, or setting their balances from the table at the bottom of your file.
That means your history is complete and your balances are not: the transactions are all there, attached to the names they came with. It is worth knowing before you import rather than after, because the number you see afterwards is a total of what you brought, not a copy of what FinEye showed you.