Migrating from Mint
Lunch Money makes it easy to migrate your existing data from Mint (or any other app/bank providing CSV exports) and continue tracking your personal finance.
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Before you start
This guide will take you through the steps to get your Mint data imported into Lunch Money. If you are an existing Lunch Money user, you have a few options to consider:
If you've already imported your historical transactions via CSV and now wish to set-up account syncing to automatically import new transactions, click the link below:
👉 I've imported my historical transactions. How do I get my accounts to sync now?
Step 1: Export your existing transactions from Mint
To get started, you'll need a CSV (comma-separated value) file of your historical transactions from Mint. As Mint only supported exporting up to 10,000 rows at a time, if you have more than 1 CSV file, you can repeat the import process as necessary.
As of mid-2024, Intuit no longer supports exporting Mint transaction data to CSV.
Step 2: Ready your account for migration
If you haven't signed up for a Lunch Money account yet, now is the time to do so! You can register here. After registration, you will be prompted to import your data from Mint:
Step 3: Go through the Mint migration tool
The Mint migration tool is part of the CSV importing tool. You can get there by clicking on this link, or by going to the Transactions page and clicking on the import icon:
In general, importing a CSV will consist of the following steps:
Step A: Upload a file
To use the Mint migration tool, select 'Migrate from Mint'.
Step B: Assign columns
This is where you map the columns of your CSV data to the relevant columns within Lunch Money. For the Mint migration tool, we do this automatically for you and this step is skipped. If you would like to view the columns assigned, you can click 'Back' from the Review Settings step.
The Mint migration tool will import all the columns exported from Mint, which include:
Date
Description (known as 'payee' in Lunch Money)
Original description (known as 'original name' in Lunch Money)
Amount
Amount Type
Account
Category
Notes
Labels (known as 'tags' in Lunch Money)
Step C: Review settings
Review Notations
As a quick confidence check, double-check to ensure that the date formats and transaction amount notations are correct. This involves ensuring no dates are being converted into "Invalid Date"s, and that debits and credits are properly assigned.
Review Categories
This step will display the list of categories that have been detected within your CSV file. If you have existing categories that match, the tool will map them accordingly. If not, you have the option to:
create a new category with a different name
assign to an existing category
leave blank to create a category of the same name
leave uncategorized
If you're creating new categories, you'll want to do some additional set-up to ensure a smooth transition to Lunch Money. Please see the following FAQ at the end of this article: I've created new categories. What should I do to ensure compatibility within Lunch Money?
Review Tags
Similar to reviewing categories, this step will display the list of tags that have been detected within your CSV file, If you have existing tags that match, the tool will map them accordingly. If not, you have the option to:
create a new tag with a different name
assign to an existing tag
leave blank to create a tag of the same name
leave untagged
Important note regarding exporting labels from Mint
When exporting files from Mint, please note that tags are separated by spaces. However, Mint also permits spaces within individual tags, which can complicate accurate parsing of your data.
This CSV import tool assumes multiple tags are delimited by a comma (','). If your transactions involve multiple tags, we strongly advise using a tool like Google Sheets to manually insert commas between each tag to ensure accurate data interpretation in Lunch Money.
Review Accounts
Similar to reviewing categories and tags, this step will display the list of accounts that have been detected within your CSV file. You have the option to:
assign to an existing account
Note that if you want to assign this to a synced account, you'll need to ensure the 'Allow modifications to transactions' setting is enabled for that account from the Accounts page)
create a new account
We recommend this option. Just set the account type and you're good to go! You can modify accounts and add more information later from the Accounts page.
leave blank to assign transactions to the default 'Cash' account
This is the fastest option but we don't recommend it as there will be no way to differentiate your transactions between accounts.
Final Settings
The final step will display the malformed lines in your CSV that will not be imported. This will typically include the first line, which is the header.
You also have the option to run these transactions through our Rules engine, if you have any set up, and to de-duplicate as needed.
Step D: Review Transactions
This step will display the transactions exactly as they will appear within Lunch Money once the import process is finished. Ensure that the data is correct. You also have the option to deselect any transactions if you want to exclude them from the import.
Step E: Insert Transactions
If you have over 500 transactions to import, this will be done through a background job and the system will email you within just a few minutes when that's finished. Otherwise, you can go straight to your transactions!
If you are not importing into a synced account, you will also have the option here to review and update your account balances if necessary. You may also skip this step and update the balance anytime from the Accounts page.
Congratulations! You've imported your historical data from Mint to Lunch Money! 🎉
FAQs
I've imported my historical transactions. How do I get my accounts to sync now?
If you created accounts as part of the Mint migration or CSV import process, you will now see these accounts on the Accounts page. These created accounts are all manually-managed accounts and are not synced.
To start syncing for these accounts, you'll need to set up syncing with your banking institution. On the Accounts page, click on "Add account", and then click on "Auto-import from my bank" in the right-side panel. Go through the Plaid flow to authenticate with your bank.
Once you've gone through the process, you'll reach the 'Setup Account' step. In this dialog, make sure to choose "Yes, I am merging this with an existing account":
The system will automatically detect the date of the last transaction in the manually-managed account and only transactions on that date and onwards will be synced.
As the auto-sync is inclusive of the date of the last transaction, it may result in duplicates for that specific date. Make sure to check the Transactions page to review the newly auto-imported transactions for that specific day.
In the case where you have some transactions that were mis-dated or in the future, you can always update the earliest import date for the synced account via the 'Edit Account' panel on the Accounts page:
By changing the earliest import date, you'll tell the system to automatically begin fetching transactions starting from that new date onwards.
I've created new categories. What should I do to ensure compatibility within Lunch Money?
Set category properties
In Lunch Money, new categories will generally be created as expense categories by default. To define a category as an income category, you will need to enable the "Treat as income" property for that category via the Categories page. You may also set other category properties, such as "Exclude from totals" and "Exclude from budget".
To learn more about category properties, click here.
Set-up autocategorization
If you plan to sync transactions automatically from your bank, you'll want to ensure your auto-categorizations are set up properly. This involves mapping your existing categories to Plaid's taxonomy.
Imported transactions include metadata from Plaid including their best-guess as to the category of the transaction. Within Lunch Money, we also have a rules engine where you can create more complex rules to categorize or otherwise modify these transactions. However, auto-categorization is an easy first step to avoid a slew of uncategorized transactions when you start syncing.
To set up auto-categorization, click here or follow the link from the Categories page. Note that the button link only appears if you have actively-syncing accounts.
I'm having trouble, where can I get support?
If you need any assistance or have any questions, feel free to email us at support@lunchmoney.app or open an support ticket from the 'HELP' menu at the top right within the Lunch Money app! 😊
You can also join our community Discord to ask questions, share feedback, and interact with other Lunch Money users!
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