How to Export YNAB to Nethaven Without Losing Budget History

YNAB’s export is not a CSV. It is a .zip holding two files, and the second one is the reason the migration is worth doing at all: Plan.csv carries what you assigned to each category, month by month, going back to the start of your budget. Nethaven reads both files out of that .zip, so a four-year YNAB history arrives as four years of budget months rather than a flat list of transactions. Upload is one step, and nothing is written to your account until you approve the preview.

This is the part worth knowing before you start, because almost every other budgeting app exports transactions only. Leave Monarch, Copilot, or Rocket Money and you carry over spending history. Leave YNAB and you carry over the plan behind the spending as well.

What is actually inside the YNAB export?

A full plan export contains transaction and plan data. In the archive format Nethaven supports, the filenames include the plan name and export date. Inside it:

• Register.csv: every transaction across every account, with Account, Date, Payee, Category Group/Category, Memo, Outflow, Inflow, Flag, and Cleared.
• Plan.csv (older exports name it Budget.csv): one row per category per month, with Budgeted, Activity, and Available.

Nethaven identifies both files by their column headers, never by their filenames. That is deliberate. The filename contains your budget name, which you chose and can rename, and a localized export can translate it. Nethaven matches supported column headers, so changing the plan-name portion does not change detection. A new vendor format or unsupported file extension can still fail.

How do I export my budget from YNAB?

Export from the web app, following YNAB's current plan export instructions. YNAB calls this a plan export and documents two CSV or TSV files, depending on number formatting. Keep the downloaded archive intact when it contains both files.

1. Sign in at app.ynab.com and open the budget you are moving.
2. Click the plan name at the top of the left sidebar.
3. Choose “Export Plan”.
4. Keep the downloaded .zip exactly as it is. Do not unzip it, and do not open the CSVs in Excel or Numbers.

That last step is the one people skip. Spreadsheet software rewrites dates, decimal separators, blank fields, and quoting when it saves, which is how a clean export turns into ambiguous amounts. If your locale uses comma decimals, the original file is the only one worth uploading.

The archive importer currently reads files with a .csv extension. YNAB also documents .tsv exports for some number formats; do not assume those archives will import unchanged. If your archive contains .tsv files, request help or obtain a supported export. Do not simply rename files to bypass the format check.

How do I upload it to Nethaven?

There are three routes into the same wizard. During onboarding, choose YNAB when Nethaven asks which app you are leaving. Afterwards, open Settings and then Import data. If Nethaven notices you are still on starter data, the dashboard shows a prompt that opens the same flow. The YNAB import page starts signup with YNAB already selected if you have not created an account yet.

Drop in the .zip and Nethaven detects the format, parses both files, and builds a preview. There is no column mapping step for a YNAB export. Mapping exists for files Nethaven does not recognize, and a YNAB export is recognized.

Does my YNAB budget history transfer?

Yes, and it is the piece worth verifying. Nethaven stores the Budgeted amount for every category in every month Plan.csv covers, so an old month opens with the numbers you actually assigned at the time instead of collapsing into today’s category list.

Investigate each reconciliation warning before confirming. Differences can reflect missing transactions, date coverage, or behavior Nethaven does not reproduce. A small warning count does not establish that the result is correct. Check representative months against YNAB before using the imported amounts in Nethaven budgeting.

How are transfers, splits, and starting balances handled?

These three are where a naive CSV import goes wrong, so the YNAB importer treats each one specifically:

• Transfers. YNAB writes a transfer as “Transfer : Account” and exports both legs. Importing both would double every internal movement, so Nethaven pairs the legs and keeps one. A leg with no mirror is not dropped, it imports as an ordinary expense or income and raises a warning, so no money disappears quietly.
• Splits. YNAB does not mark splits in the export, so Nethaven groups consecutive rows that share a date and payee and indexes them as parts of one transaction. Two genuinely separate purchases from the same shop on the same day can be grouped this way, which is worth a glance rather than a worry.
• Starting balances. A “Starting Balance” row opens each YNAB account. If an account has none, Nethaven names it in a warning and tells you the imported balance will be short by whatever that account held before the history begins.

What should I check on the preview screen?

Nothing is committed until you confirm, so the preview is where the real work happens. Five things to read before you press the button:

1. Transaction, account, and category counts, against what YNAB shows.
2. Per-account opening and reconstructed balances. Compare these yourself with YNAB and the relevant bank statements; the preview does not supply a separate export-reported closing-balance comparison.
3. The budget reconciliation line, which counts disagreeing cells.
4. Guessed account types. The export does not record whether an account is checking, savings, credit, or a loan, so Nethaven infers it from the account name and flags every guess. A card named “Amex” lands as a credit card; something named ambiguously lands as checking.
5. Whether to switch on “Replace my starter data”. It deletes the onboarding accounts, transactions, categories, budgets, and goals Nethaven created for you before applying the import. Leave it off if you have already set anything up by hand.

The import help guide walks the same screens with screenshots for mobile and desktop.

What does not transfer from YNAB?

Four things stay behind, each for a reason worth knowing:

• Targets and goals. The export does not describe them in a form Nethaven can rebuild without guessing at your intent. Your categories and their monthly amounts do arrive, so you can set current targets with the history sitting underneath them.
• Scheduled transactions. Only history is in the file. Recreate upcoming recurring bills in Nethaven, where they become tracked subscriptions rather than reminders.
• Loan payoff details. Loan accounts import as accounts, but payoff tracking needs an original amount and a start date, and a YNAB export contains neither. Nethaven asks you for them instead of inventing them.
• Flags and cleared state. Read from the register but not carried across. Rarely missed.

What should I do right after the import?

Open accounts first and correct any balance the preview flagged. Then fix the account types Nethaven guessed wrong, and look at transfers that came in as two ordinary rows. After that the ledger is yours, and the habit that keeps it clean is a monthly money review for the stragglers. Keep a protected original until reconciliation is complete, then remove unnecessary loose copies. Use encrypted storage if retaining the archive.

If you are still weighing the move rather than making it, the Nethaven vs YNAB comparison covers where each app leads.

Other sources have different limits. The Actual Budget and Lunch Money guides explain why their transaction exports do not provide supported budget-history imports.