Yes — you can build a full budget from a bank CSV without ever connecting your bank. Download your transaction history from your bank's website, map the date, description and amount columns once, and Budget Fury categorises what it recognises, detects recurring charges, and drafts the plan from your real history.
Why start from history instead of a blank budget
A budget you write from memory is a wish list. Ask someone what they spend on groceries and they will be 20–40% low; ask about eating out and it is worse. The gap is not dishonesty, it is that small frequent purchases are genuinely invisible in recall.
Starting from an export removes the guessing entirely. Three months of transactions tell you what your grocery envelope should be, which subscriptions you forgot you had, and which month contains the annual bill you were about to plan straight over. It also means your first month is not a shock — the numbers were derived from your own behaviour, so they are achievable by construction.
And unlike a live bank connection, an import is a one-off event. Nothing stays linked; there is no standing permission to revoke. See why that matters.
Getting the CSV out of your bank
Nearly every bank offers this on the web, and nearly none of them offer it in the mobile app — so use a desktop browser. Look for Statements, Transactions, Download or Export, then choose CSV. If you are offered OFX, QFX or Excel as well, take the CSV.
Export three months if you can, and twelve if the option is there. Three gives you reliable averages for the everyday categories. Twelve additionally catches the annual bills — insurance, road tax, renewals — which are exactly the ones that wreck a budget built on a three-month window. If your bank caps the range, do several exports and import them one after another.
Two things worth knowing before you start. Banks disagree about signs: some use a single Amount column with negatives for debits, others use separate Debit and Credit columns. And European exports frequently use semicolons as separators and commas as decimal points. Both are normal, and both are handled at the mapping step rather than by editing the file.
What the import actually does with your data
Mapping the columns is only the first part. Once Budget Fury can read the rows, it does three passes over them before anything is saved:
- Category matching. Descriptions that match transactions you have already categorised get the same category automatically. On a first import this starts empty and fills up as you work through the preview, so the list gets faster as you go.
- Apple Intelligence suggestions. Where there is no history to match against, the app proposes a category on-device. Anything it cannot place is left in a clearly marked placeholder rather than being silently guessed into the wrong bucket.
- Recurrence detection. The importer compares transaction names across months and flags likely recurring charges — the subscription you forgot, the standing order, the monthly insurance. These become fixed expenses, and once you confirm them they are projected forward for twelve months.
All of this happens in a preview that is not yet saved. You review and correct the whole list before a single transaction is written to your budget.
Cleaning up after the import
Two jobs are worth doing immediately, while the data is fresh.
Fix the bulk-categorised rows. In the preview you can select several transactions at once and assign them a category together — far quicker than one at a time, and the worst offenders (a supermarket that appears forty times under three different merchant strings) are all fixed in one action.
Set your envelope limits from the result. Once the history is in, you can read your real monthly average per category and set each envelope from that number. Round it, do not slash it — an envelope 30% below your actual spending is a resolution, not a budget.
Import a bank CSV into Budget Fury
- Export from your bank on a desktop browser
Log in to online banking, find Statements or Transactions, set the widest date range offered, and download as CSV. Three months minimum; twelve if you can, so annual bills are captured.
- Open the import screen
In Budget Fury go to Settings → Import and choose the file. On Mac and iPad the import runs in its own window with a full-width table, which makes reviewing a long list much easier than on a phone.
- Map three columns
Tell the app which column is the date, which is the description and which is the amount. If your bank uses separate debit and credit columns, or a semicolon separator, set that here. You do this once per bank format.
- Review the preview — nothing is saved yet
The transactions appear in a table with proposed categories. Anything the app could not place is marked as unassigned rather than guessed. Select rows in bulk to assign a category to many at once.
- Confirm the recurring charges it found
Budget Fury flags transactions that repeat across months. Confirm the real ones as fixed expenses — they will be projected forward twelve months, so this is the moment that builds your bills and subscriptions list for the year.
- Save, then set your envelope limits
Save the import. Now read the monthly averages per category and use them to set your Expense Envelope limits. Your budget is now derived from evidence rather than optimism.
Common questions
What CSV format does Budget Fury need?
Any format with a date, a description and an amount. You map the columns yourself during import, which is why exports from different banks all work without editing the file first — including separate debit/credit columns and semicolon-separated European exports.
How many months should I import?
Three as a minimum for reliable averages; twelve if your bank allows it, so that annual and quarterly bills show up. Those irregular charges are the ones most likely to break a new budget, and they are invisible in a short window.
Will importing overwrite my existing budget?
No. The import runs in a preview you review before anything is written, and imported transactions are added alongside what you already have.
Do I have to re-import every month?
No — the import is for the initial setup and for catching up after a gap. Day to day you enter expenses as you make them, which is what keeps the budget useful rather than merely accurate.
Ten minutes to a budget built on evidence
One CSV, three columns mapped, and Budget Fury drafts your envelopes, finds your subscriptions and builds the month from what you actually spent. No bank connection required.