Switching Is Easy: Import From Any App in 10 Minutes
Your financial history shouldn't be held hostage by the app you used to use. Here's how YourDigits imports from Bluecoins, YNAB, Monarch, Copilot, or a CSV.
Joy Casfhir·7 min read·Published Jul 13, 2026The reason most people don't switch budgeting apps isn't that they love the one they're using. It's that they've got years of transaction history sitting inside it, and the idea of abandoning all that data feels worse than putting up with the app they've outgrown. Starting from a blank database is its own kind of loss. Every previous expense, every category you carefully set up, every tag that explains what "misc" actually was last August. Gone.
I know that feeling because I would have refused to switch apps for exactly the same reason. That's actually why the import wizard exists. Not as a competitive feature to win users from other apps, but because I needed to be able to bring my own data with me or I wouldn't use my own app.
My History Was the Problem
I've been tracking in Bluecoins since 2020, when I moved to Australia. Roughly 4,600 transactions of my actual life. Rent payments, grocery runs, that phone repair I shouldn't have paid for, Queensland airport charges from a trip I half-forgot about until the records reminded me.
When I started building YourDigits in December 2025, the first thing I thought about wasn't the Leak Ladder or voice entry or the adaptive targets. It was how I was going to get my Bluecoins history into this thing. Because if I couldn't bring it in, I couldn't be my own first user. And if I couldn't be my own first user, I couldn't build the app properly.
So the import adapters existed before a lot of the stuff that ended up being the marketing hook. They existed because I needed them to.
Your history feeds the Leak Ladder detection. The import exists so you can bring that history forward and let the new system diagnose your leaks in priority order from the data you already have.
My cousin has the same problem from a different angle. He tried Bluecoins. He tried spreadsheets. He gave up on both within a few weeks because the entry friction was too high. But he still had some data from those attempts. And the idea that switching to another app meant throwing away even the bits he'd managed to record was one more reason not to bother. Whether you've got 4,600 transactions or 46, the barrier is the same. Your history matters. You shouldn't have to leave it behind.
What the Import Wizard Actually Does
YourDigits has four dedicated adapters and one generic adapter:
- Bluecoins. If you've exported your account via the Bluecoins CSV export, drop it in.
- YNAB. The register export works directly.
- Monarch Money. The transactions export works directly.
- Copilot Money. The transactions export works directly.
- Generic CSV. Works with any app, bank, or spreadsheet that can produce a CSV of transactions.
The four named adapters have format detection built in. You don't have to pick "Bluecoins" from a dropdown. The wizard reads the file, recognises the column layout, and routes it to the right parser. If you've got an export from one of these apps, the path is simple: download the CSV, drag it into the YourDigits wizard, and keep going.
The generic CSV adapter is for everyone else. Spreadsheets, banks that export statements, apps that aren't in the four above. If the file has columns that look like dates, amounts, descriptions, and categories, the wizard can work with it. Anything ambiguous gets mapped in a review step before anything is imported.
The 6 Steps
The wizard has six screens, and they're named exactly what they do.
1. Pick File. You drag in the CSV or tap to select it. That's the whole step.
2. Parse & Validate. The app reads the file and checks that it's structurally valid. If there are rows that don't match the expected shape (missing dates, malformed amounts, truncated lines), they get flagged here so you can see them before anything moves forward. Valid rows move on. Invalid rows surface with the reason they couldn't be parsed, and you can fix the source file and re-upload if you want.
3. Review Entities. This is where categories and accounts get matched. Your old categories get mapped to the Leak Ladder framework where the mapping is clear (groceries stays groceries, fuel stays fuel). Accounts get matched to your existing YourDigits accounts, or created new. If there's anything the system isn't sure about, you get a small list to look at and approve or adjust. Not hundreds of things. Just the ones that genuinely need a human call.
4. Confirm. A summary screen. "Here's what's about to happen." Number of transactions, date range, categories that will be created, accounts that will be created, and the flagged rows that the system has marked as potentially problematic. Duplicates that already exist in your YourDigits account get called out here too, so nothing double-imports.
5. Import. You tap the button. The transactions are written to the database. This is fast because the work happened in the review and confirm steps. No spinning wheel for ten minutes.
6. Done. The app shows you what landed, where to find it, and takes you into the normal transaction view so you can see your history already populated. The Leak Ladder audit runs next, so the newly imported data starts feeding the leak detection straight away.
End to end, the whole thing takes roughly 10 minutes for most people. The bulk of that is you reviewing what's about to be imported, not the app waiting for anything.
Why the Flagged Row Preview Is the Part I Care About
The step I keep coming back to is the Confirm screen's flagged row preview. Here's why.
When you import transactions from an old system into a new one, things go wrong in predictable ways. Duplicates. Transactions that got split weirdly in the export. Categories the new system doesn't recognise. Accounts that don't exist yet. A normal import tool either silently drops the problematic rows so you never see them, or lets them through and you discover the mess after the fact when your categories are a disaster.
YourDigits does neither. It shows you the problematic rows before the import runs. Not as a wall of technical errors. As a clear list: "These 3 look like duplicates of transactions you already have. These 2 have categories that don't exist yet and will be created. This one has an amount that doesn't parse." You can accept, skip, or go back and fix the source file.
That matters because trust is the whole point of an import wizard. If the first thing you do with a new app is hand it 5 years of data and then watch it scramble the categories, you're not going to trust anything that comes after it. The budget feels wrong, the Leak Ladder scoring feels wrong, the spending pace feels wrong, and it's all because of an import mess you can't easily undo. So the wizard surfaces everything it's unsure about first. Then you decide.
Duplicate detection is part of the same logic. If you're re-importing after a partial import, or you're bringing in overlapping date ranges from two different sources, the wizard catches transactions that already exist in your account and marks them so they don't get written twice. You can still import them if you want (sometimes there's a legitimate reason), but it's an active choice, not an accident.
If You're Coming From a Spreadsheet
Spreadsheets are where the real long-timers live. People who tried a few apps and ended up back in Google Sheets or Excel because at least there they could make it work. I know that pattern because I was in it. I spent most of 2024 rebuilding my pay cycle budget in Sheets before I built the app version of the same flow.
The generic CSV adapter handles spreadsheets the same way it handles any other file. Export the sheet as CSV, drop it in the wizard, map any columns that don't auto-detect (most do), and keep going. The review step works the same way. The flagged rows work the same way. If you've got years of history in a spreadsheet, that history comes across with the same treatment as a Bluecoins or YNAB export would. You're not losing the work you already did.
Your History Is the Point
I keep coming back to this because it's the thing I care about most. The reason I built the import wizard early isn't that I wanted YourDigits to look welcoming to people leaving other apps. It's that your transaction history matters. It's the record of where you've been. It's what lets you look back and figure out why your September was weird, or when a subscription actually started bleeding you dry.
Whether you've got 4,600 entries or 46, the history is yours and the wizard exists so you can take it with you.
Download YourDigits on the App Store and bring your history with you. If you're on Bluecoins, YNAB, Monarch Money, Copilot Money, or any CSV-capable setup, the wizard handles the translation. If you want to see where you land on the Leak Ladder before you switch, take the Know Your Digits quiz first. roughly 3 minutes, no signup. The quiz tells you which leaks are active, so you know what your first pay cycle inside YourDigits is going to focus on once your history is in.
Related reading:
Joy Casfhir
Accountant turned app builder. Tracked 4,600+ transactions by hand over 5 years. Had all the data but no system for knowing what to fix first. That experience became the Leak Ladder: your money has leaks you can't see, and there's an order to fixing them. Built YourDigits to find those leaks and tell you what to fix first.
@casfhirTake the Audit
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