How to import a Zen statement
A Zen statement is a document, not a data file: your name, your IBAN and four totals sit above the table, and a paragraph about the Central Bank of Lithuania sits below it. Most tools give up on the first line. This one reads the file as it downloads.
How to bring it in
- 1. Open Zen on the web or in the app, go to the account and download its statement. Choose CSV, not PDF.
- 2. Zen writes one statement per currency, so download each currency you use.
- 3. Do not tidy the file up. The account block at the top and the legal text at the bottom are skipped for you, and re-saving a CSV usually rewrites the dates.
- 4. Open Money Talks, go to Settings and tap Import Data.
- 5. Choose Zen from the list.
- 6. Pick the file, then read the preview. An exchange shows as one transfer with both currencies, so you can check it before anything is saved.
- 7. Confirm.
The file you need
Zen exports one CSV file per currency, comma-separated, with a dot for decimals and dates written as a day, a month name and a year.
You have the right file if its first line looks like this:
Date,Transaction type,Description,Settlement amount,Settlement currency,Original amount,Original currency,Currency rate,Fee description,Fee amount,Fee currency,BalanceTwo amounts per row, each with its own currency. Settlement is your side of the movement, Original is the other side, and on an exchange that is what lets one row describe the whole move.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to delete my name and IBAN from the top of the file first?
No. Import the file exactly as it downloaded. A Zen statement opens with the account owner, the address, the IBAN and four totals, and closes with a paragraph naming the Central Bank of Lithuania. None of that has the shape of a transaction, which is why plain CSV tools fail on the first line and report that they cannot find the separator. Money Talks looks past both ends and finds the table in the middle.
Zen gives me a statement for each currency. Do I need all of them?
Download the ones whose payments you want. You do not need a second file to make sense of an exchange, though. Zen writes both sides of a currency exchange on one row: the euro that left in Settlement amount, the zloty that arrived in Original amount, each with its own currency. One file is enough to record the whole move. If you import several statements, the same exchange appears in each of them, so check the preview for the ones you already brought in.
Which amount is imported, settlement or original?
Settlement, because that is the figure that reached your balance. It matters most on a fee: a 904.50 top-up with a 4.50 processing fee settles at 900.00, and 900.00 is the number in your balance. The fee has already been taken out of the settlement amount, so adding it back would count it twice. This is the opposite of Revolut, where the fee sits outside the amount and has to be added, which is exactly why we pinned both rather than assuming one rule.
Is this the same thing as ZenMoney?
No, they are unrelated. Zen, at zen.com, is an electronic money institution in Lithuania that gives you an account and a card. ZenMoney is a budgeting app. Both import into Money Talks and each has its own guide, but the files look nothing alike.
The dates say 26 Mar 2024 rather than a number. Is that a problem?
No. A month name is read as it stands, in the format Zen writes it. You do not need to open the file in a spreadsheet and reformat the column first, and doing that is usually what breaks an import: a spreadsheet rewrites the whole column to its own local format on save.
Zen offers a PDF too. Can I use that?
Use the CSV. A PDF describes where ink goes on a page rather than which number belongs to which column, so a reader has to infer the table from the spacing and gets it wrong on exactly the unusual rows. The CSV holds the same statement with its columns still labelled.
Do I need an account in Money Talks to import?
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 Zen
- Every payment with its date and the description Zen recorded
- The settlement amount, which is the figure that reached your balance
- A currency exchange as one transfer with both amounts and both currencies, read from the single row that holds them
- Dates written as 26 Mar 2024, without you reformatting anything
What does not come across
- The account block at the top - The account holder, the IBAN and the four totals are a description of the statement rather than transactions, so they are skipped along with the rest of the header.
- The legal paragraph at the bottom - The note that the document is computer-generated and the line naming the regulator are not rows of data, and they are what makes most readers refuse the file.
- Categories - A Zen statement has none. Money Talks suggests a category per description during the import and you correct the ones it gets wrong.
- The running balance - The Balance column is the result of the transactions rather than a transaction, so it is not imported.
- Rows that settled at zero - Nothing reached the balance, so there is nothing to record. They are marked as skipped on purpose.
The file that most tools refuse
Open a Zen statement in a text editor and the transactions are somewhere in the middle. Above them: the account owner, a street address, the IBAN, the BIC, the currency, and four totals. Below them: two sentences saying the document is computer-generated and naming the regulator.
That is a document. A CSV reader expects a data file, which is a header row
followed by rows of the same width. Handed this one it looks at line one, finds
EUR – Account Statement with no separator in it, and reports that it cannot
determine the column separator. Nothing is wrong with the file. The reader just
started in the wrong place.
Money Talks looks for the block of lines that agree on their column count and covers the most cells, then treats that as the table and drops everything above and below it.
The detail there is cells, not lines, and it is the difference between working and failing quietly. Zen’s totals block looks like this:
Total income:,1800.00,EUR
Opening balance:,0.00,EUR
Total outcome:,-900.90,EUR
Closing balance:,899.10,EUR
Four consistent lines of three columns. A statement from a quiet month might hold one transaction, which with its header is two lines of twelve columns. Go by whichever run is longer and you import the four totals and none of the money. Go by area, and twenty-four beats twelve every time.
An exchange is on one row, so one file is enough
Zen issues a separate statement per currency. That sounds like it should make a currency exchange impossible to read from a single file: the euro leaves in one statement and the zloty arrives in another.
It does not, because the row already has both. Settlement amount and
Settlement currency are this account’s side. Original amount and
Original currency are the other side of the same movement. On an exchange row
that reads as: 899.10 EUR left, 3,870.00 PLN arrived, at 4.30500.
Money Talks records that as one transfer holding both amounts and both currencies. The rate you were given is preserved as the gap between the two numbers rather than reconstructed from a rate table later. And you do not need the zloty statement to make the euro one make sense.
The fee is already out of the amount
A top-up of 904.50 with a 4.50 processing fee settles at 900.00. The Fee amount
column says -4.50, the Settlement amount column says 900.00, and 900.00 is
what your balance moved by.
So the fee must not be added back. Doing so would record 904.50 for money that arrived as 900.00, and every fee in the file would be counted twice.
This is worth stating because the rule goes the other way at Revolut, where the fee sits outside the amount and has to be added on. Two statements that look similar, two opposite arithmetic rules. Both are pinned by a test against a real export, because guessing between them costs real money in a total.
What a statement cannot give you
No categories: Zen does not export any. Money Talks suggests one per description during the import and you correct what it gets wrong. For a year of history that is a few minutes, and it is the only manual work.
No sight of your other accounts either. A transfer out to a bank elsewhere is just an outgoing payment from this statement’s point of view, because from Zen’s side that is all it is.