I’ve noticed when importing CSV files and going through matching that the system doesn’t check against cleared transactions, which can lead to me creating new transactions, ultimately resulting in duplicate cleared transactions.
Is there something off with my workflow, or a workaround that I should be using when I’m trying to review and clear my transactions?
I’ll wait for the admins (@alex?) to weigh in on .csv imports, but if you’re able to import data as a Quicken file (.qfx) it will behave the way you want it to. This is my default for all imports and it works very smoothly. But I’m also curious as to why the .csv behaves differently!
Hi wordygwj,
Thanks for posting and sorry for the trouble! Goodbudget should be able to check the transactions you’re importing against your existing transactions, so you don’t accidentally create duplicates.
If that’s not happening, it might be because the Name, Date, or Amount of the transactions in your files are changing from file to file. To clarify, when you use a CSV file to import with, Goodbudget creates a special identifier for each transaction based on their Name, Date and Amount. If any of those pieces of information change, Goodbudget will think it’s an entirely new transaction and therefore allow you to import again. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen specifically with CSV files that had transactions that had not cleared in the Goodbudgeter’s bank yet. When the transaction finally cleared, the Name, Date, or Amount changed and resulted in them importing the transaction again. Hope that made sense!
Tiffany’s suggestion of using a QFX might work. If your bank offers them, feel free to give it a try. But, you might be better off filtering your CSV file for a date range that doesn’t overlap with transactions you’ve already imported. You could even edit your CSV file directly to remove transactions that are still pending, in case that was the issue.
Hope that helps!
I’m actually not seeing cleared transactions on the right column at all. If it’s been previously matched it (correctly, but perhaps unhelpfully) isn’t displayed in either column. If the Goodbudget transaction is marked as cleared, the transaction isn’t displayed, either.
I appreciate the QFX suggestion, but unfortunately the system I’m pulling from only offers CSV downloads. I’m willing to do the work by hand to match imported transactions to already cleared entries, but I need to be able to see the cleared transactions to do that.
@Karisa, is this new? I don’t remember it dropping cleared transactions from the imported comparisons before, but I get the same behavior if I try to import a .csv. Why doesn’t it match them the same way the .qfx files do?
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Hi all,
I apologize, as I think I misunderstand wordygwj’s first post. I thought you were saying that you were seeing transactions you’ve already imported showing up in the Existing Transactions column, and therefore were creating duplicates.
I think you’re wondering why Goodbudget isn’t checking your Transactions to Import against transactions you’ve marked as Cleared. Is that right?
If so, the answer is, it should. As long as those transactions haven’t been imported before (which would mean they’ve been branded with a FITID), then Goodbudget should be serving them to you under the Existing Transactions column.
If that’s not what you’re experiencing, email us at support@goodbudget.com and let us know which transaction(s) that you’ve marked as Cleared but are not showing on the import screen.
Of course, if I’m still misunderstanding you, please don’t hesitate to let me know 
Thanks for your patience!
I’m new to this forum method of support but this looks like the closest thing to the problem I am having. I recently discovered the “import bank transactions” option, which will be awesome once I can get my accounts to match.
The problem I am having is similar to what was listed in the original question. When I import bank transactions in CSV format it shows the bank transaction column but many of my Goodbudget transactions are not there. I’m not sure if this is due to those transactions being previously matched/imported or being cleared, but if that was the case then why are the bank transactions showing up? If they have already been matched/imported then both should be gone or both should be there???
I tried the QFX method. In that case only the bank transactions column is populated and there is nothing in the goodbudget column.
I really like goodbudget and like the transaction import even more but I really need it to be able to match transactions so I can identify discrepancies such as transactions I forgot to add, double added, or had a typo on.
Please help! =)
QFX is my favorite, and it will only attempt to match transactions that aren’t reconciled (I think), and the reconciliation function is limited to the dates you’ve indicated on the import screen. For example, if you’ve marked all of your May transactions as reconciled and then you attempt to import and reconcile the May statement, you won’t see any Goodbudget transactions. Also, if your bank records a transaction on May 30 but your entry in GB is dated June 1, it won’t show up as an option during reconciliation.
You might try changing “reconciled” transactions that haven’t been matched to your most recent statement to “cleared” and then trying again; Goodbudget should attempt to match them up while showing you any that don’t match.
Finally, don’t manually mark any transactions as Reconciled. Just “clear” them, and let the system “reconcile” them when you go through the formal reconciliation process.
I’m not sure any of this helps, but I hope so!
Edit: Importing bank transactions will Clear them, and going through the Reconciliation process will change them to Reconciled.
Second edit: I’m pretty sure you can only import transactions once; if you’ve already done it then GB will ignore them the next time around.
Thank you for your reply! I am running into a couple of problems at the moment.
The first is that I imported my bank transactions but then wanted to confirm some things and tried to import again hoping that the transactions were matched would again show up so I could cross check them. The problem is the bank transaction show up but the Good Budget transactions that were already imported from the bank are not showing up and it is allowing me to import transactions that were already imported and matched. Is there a way to reset this so both sides show up?
I tried making the “unchecking” the Good Budget transactions so they are not reconciled but that does not seem to change anything unless there is another step I am missing there to make the app recognize that they are not reconciled.
Specifically for the purposes of preventing already-Imported transactions from appearing again and confusing matters for future uploads, they are blocked from showing up again in future Imports. This blocking is related to code that isn’t visible within the app itself, so it’s not possible to have already-Imported transactions appear again in the Import process, even if you change their status from Cleared or Reconciled back to nothing.
The only way to reset this, as you’re imagining, would be to delete all the transactions in your household that match the Import so Goodbudget doesn’t see anything as matching.
Hey Alex,
I noticed that starting last week. None of my previously imported transactions are blocked. They are all showing up as new, even though I have already imported and reconciled them. Is there something going on with the coding?
Any thoughts?
Short answer is, if you’ve been importing for a while and this is suddenly happening, it’s likely that your bank changed something that’s causing this problem.
Long answer is, your bank gives each transaction in a OFX or QFX file a unique number called a FITID. When you import that file, Goodbudget records that FITID so it can keep track of which transactions you’ve imported before and not show them or let them be imported again in the future. However, if your bank changes the way they create FITIDs, then Goodbudget won’t be able to know that you already imported those transactions.
This isn’t guaranteed to the be the issue, but it’s what’s happened in the vast majority of the cases where we hear something like what you’re saying. If you’d like, we can confirm this for you if you send two import files (with overlapping but not identical transactions on them) to us at support@goodbudget.com.
In the meantime, you can try importing a CSV file if your bank offers it, or you can try downloading a file that covers a date range that excludes transactions you would’ve already uploaded.
Hi Alex and others
I don’t understand if the problem has been understood yet. The basic thing is: the “Existing transactions” list is incomplete during the import process:
During the import process, it seems as though this particular transaction has never been registered before, but it is listed in my homepage:
I usually write down every transaction I make, but I like to do imports just to make sure I didn’t forget anything. If I do a partial import, choosing only some things, but deciding to continue later, then, later, when I import the exact same csv, it will ignore several existing transactions, such as the one I highlighted above, making me believe I might never have registered them.
Is this intentional? How could I force GoodBudget to always list every registered transaction in the “Existing transactions” section of the import?
Hi there. First, the crux of your question: It’s not possible to force every transaction to appear in the “Existing Transactions” section.
The usual reason a transaction is excluded is that it’s been Imported before. If it’s been Imported before, the assumption is that it’s been handled, and there’s other logic to prevent already-Imported transactions from showing again in the “Transactions to Import”, so hiding already-Imported transactions should ideally cut down on the load of transactions you have to deal with on that page.
So assuming you already Imported that “Panificadora / Padaria” transaction, that’s why it’s not showing on the right. It should also not be showing on the left if you already Imported it, but the CSV recognition isn’t always perfect, so you may occasionally run into cases like that, unfortunately.
The only real ways to be assured you won’t run into this in the future would be to either 1) only ever do full Imports, or 2) make sure you’re covering a known set of transactions (like if you tell yourself you Imported everything through October 16, you could safely ignore that transaction).
this is kinda in the same ballpark as the previous questions asked, so i’ll throw my questions in:
I’ve just started using GB and it looks promising since I was using Mvelopes prior.
when i import my bank transactions, they go on the left hand column, “transactions to import”. then i click/drag them into the envelope i want. seems simple enough. however, let’s say i don’t have time to allocate all the transactions, but will come back later to finish. (i tried this and when i returned, the transactions were gone).
there’s a box in the top right hand corner that says Drag a transaction to the empty space on its right to save it without matching
i tried this. the column to the right is ‘existing transactions’. but when i did, it kept asking me to create/assign the transaction. that’s exactly what i was trying not to do.
2nd question: let’s say there’s a date overlap of 2 bank transaction imports (one import was for dates 1/1-1/5. the second import was 1/4-etc).
will GB recognize any duplicate transactions and alert me so i don’t allocate it twice? i don’t want the 1/4 transactions to show up if i’ve already allocated them.
FYI, i did read all prior comments on this thread, but the answers didn’t make complete sense to me.
i’m importing with ofx
i appreciate the help.
The answer to your first question is no, there’s not a way to hold the transactions semi-imported in limbo. You can import them fully, or leave them out completely and import them at a later time.
For the second question, assuming your bank formats your files properly (so each individual transaction is coded uniquely regardless of the file), Goodbudget will also be able to recognize that you’ve previously imported a file and save you from having duplicates.
I’m not sure whether you mean you have transactions you don’t have time to match, or just transactions without matching entries that you want to import quickly. If it’s the latter, you might create a dummy envelope for “Imports” and put everything there, then you could reassign those transactions at your leisure by just opening them and choosing the appropriate envelope.
Just a thought!
I want to import it, but not assign/match it to an envelope yet. is that possible? it looks to be since there’s instructions to ‘drag a transaction to the empty space on its right to save without matching’. as i wrote earlier, it wouldn’t let me drag to the right without having me assign it to an envelope.
that sounds like a good idea…a dummy envelop to hold my transactions until i assign. that way i don’t have to import again.
Just adding to this thread…I was an Mvelopes user. Now I use Goodbudget in conjunction with Mint. Mint does an excellent job of collecting my transactions from all my accounts. I then can filter them for the days I want and export to a .csv file to import to Goodbudget. Goodbudget does a nice job of handling the import by breaking down the file by account and then uploads each account until the file is completed. There are some caveats to this method like debits need to be changed to negative (-) values before importing and pending transactions come over as well so their actual value may need to be adjusted by for example the amount of a tip. It felt a bit cumbersome at 1st but it’s also kinda fun like assembling a puzzle or solving a riddle and has become comfortable. I reconcile Goodbudget with my most used account statements each month to catch anything missed. I only use Mint as the account consolidator and nothing else. I import and rarely enter any manual transactions.
