How to move your history from Money Flow
Money Flow puts the far side of every transfer in its own columns, which makes it one of the easier apps to leave without losing anything. The catch is elsewhere: its account names contain commas, in a comma-separated file.
How to bring it in
- 1. Export your history from Money Flow. You want the CSV file.
- 2. Open Money Talks, go to Settings and tap Import Data.
- 3. Choose Money Flow from the list of apps.
- 4. Pick the file you exported.
- 5. Read the preview. Transfers appear as one row naming both accounts, so you can check the pairing before anything is saved.
- 6. Confirm.
The file you need
Money Flow exports one CSV file.
You have the right file if its first line looks like this:
Date,Account,Amount,Currency,Category,Counterparty,Transfer: Account,Transfer: Amount,Transfer: Currency,Tags,Place,NoteThe three Transfer: columns name the other side of a move between your own accounts. They are empty on ordinary spending and income.
Frequently asked questions
Will my transfers between accounts come across?
Yes. Money Flow writes the far side of a transfer into its own Transfer: Account, Transfer: Amount and Transfer: Currency columns, so both halves are on one row and nothing has to be guessed. Money Talks records them as a single transfer with both sides.
My account is called Cash, USD. Does the comma break the file?
No. Money Flow quotes the name, so the comma is inside the field rather than separating two of them. It is worth knowing because a script that splits each line on commas will break here, and it is the most common reason a hand-rolled import of a Money Flow file produces nonsense.
A transfer in my file has no arriving amount. What happens to it?
It still comes across as a transfer. When Money Flow names the far account but leaves the arriving amount blank, the money moved between two accounts in the same currency and the amount is the same on both sides. Money Talks mirrors it rather than recording a zero.
How much of my history is actually transfers?
More than most people expect. In a real Money Flow export we tested against, 33 of 405 rows were transfers, many of them between currencies. That is 8% of a history that would otherwise arrive as unexplained spending and unexplained income.
What comes across from Money Flow
- Every transaction with its date, counterparty and note
- Categories
- The currency on each row, so a multi-currency history stays multi-currency
- Transfers between your own accounts, paired into one record with both sides
- The account each transaction came from, commas in the name included
What does not come across
- Tags - Money Talks has no tags. The Note and Counterparty columns come across.
- Place - Money Talks does not store a location on a transaction. If a place matters to you, it survives in the note.
- Rows with a zero amount - There is nothing to record. They are marked as skipped on purpose.
- 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.
The transfer columns do the hard part
Three columns near the end of the header carry the whole answer:
Transfer: Account, Transfer: Amount and Transfer: Currency.
On a normal purchase they are empty. On a move between two of your own accounts they name where the money went, how much arrived, and in what currency. Both halves live on one row, so nothing has to be matched up by date and amount and hoped for.
That puts Money Flow among the better apps to leave. Plenty of exports name only the account a row came from and leave the other side out entirely, and once that information is gone no importer can recover it.
Why this matters more than it sounds
Transfers feel like a niche concern until you count them. In a real Money Flow export we test against, 33 rows out of 405 were transfers, and several crossed currencies.
Handled badly, those 33 rows become 33 phantom purchases and 33 phantom deposits. Your monthly spending is overstated, your income is overstated, and the two errors do not cancel out in any view that separates them, which is every view worth looking at.
Money Talks keeps each of them as one transaction with two sides. They stay out of your spending totals, and if the two sides were in different currencies both amounts are kept, so the rate you got that day survives the move.
Commas inside account names
Money Flow lets you call an account Cash, USD, and plenty of people do. In a
comma-separated file that is a field containing the separator, which the format
handles by quoting the value.
Any proper CSV reader copes. What does not cope is the obvious approach of splitting each line on commas, which is how most quick scripts start. The row shifts by one column, the amount lands in the currency field, and you get a file full of rubbish with no error to explain it.
If you have ever tried to move a Money Flow export through a spreadsheet and wondered why the columns went crooked halfway down, this is why. Import the file as it came out of the app.