Though you can directly upload your transaction history by connecting your bank accounts, Ambrook supports the bulk manual upload of those transactions as well.
There are several cases where you may want to manually import transactions into Ambrook. For example:
You’ve made a few business transactions on a personal account, but don’t want to bring those personal transactions onto your Ledger,
You don’t use online banking for your bank account or credit card,
Your bank isn’t supported by Plaid or Moneykit, our third party bank connection providers, or
You notice discrepancies through reconciliation.
Whatever the case may be, you can use our transaction import feature to avoid missing any relevant transactions.
How to Import Transactions
This video walks through the transaction import process step by step after you've downloaded a .csv file of transactions from your bank account or credit card. You can typically find the download button in the Account History, Transactions, or anywhere you can see a list of recent transactions in your account (typically not with your statements).
If you prefer, you can also read the steps below.
Follow along as Katie guides you through a step-by-step process to importing your transaction history to Ambrook
Step 1: Create a Balance Sheet Account
First, you'll create a balance sheet account for the bank you're uploading (if it doesn't already exist on Ambrook). Head to Balances-->New Balance Sheet Account and select "Bank" or the matching type of account (credit card, line of credit, etc). Set the opening balance to the date you plan to bring your books over to Ambrook - this is typically the beginning of the year.
Step 2: Download a .csv file from Your Bank
Next, log into your online banking portal and export a CSV (comma separated file) of your transactions. Make sure to note the dates. You can typically find the download button in the Account History, Transactions, or anywhere you can see a list of recent transactions in your account (typically not with your statements).
Note: When downloading the .csv file from your bank, we recommend setting the end date to yesterday. That way you won't miss any transactions from today that haven't yet posted to your account.
Step 3: Import that .csv file to Ambrook
Once you have a file downloaded, log into Ambrook and navigate to your Ledger.
Hover over the + New button and select Import Transactions. Alternatively, you can go to Settings-->Import and click "New".
Drag and drop the CSV file from your downloads into the “Upload CSV File” box, or select a file from your computer that you've downloaded from the bank.
Select the account associated with the transactions you are uploading. If the account doesn’t exist in Ambrook, you can create a new account by clicking Create New Balance Sheet account. Once the file appears, click Next.
Step 4: Choose which information to import
Match the columns in your CSV to the relevant fields in Ambrook by clicking "Select" next to each Ambrook field. Click Next after selecting the column names.
Ambrook's system will try to correctly recognize the format of your file, but if you aren't seeing column names when you click the Select button, you can open your csv file and make sure the correct format is selected:
Only Amount means there’s a single amount column with both positive and negative amounts.
Separate Debit/Credit Amounts means there is a column for Debits and a separate column for Credits.
Combined Debit/Credit means there’s an amount column with only positive numbers and a separate column which specifies either “debit” or “credit" for each transaction.
All transactions from the file will be selected by default. You can choose to import only some transactions by deselecting either entire days of transactions or individual transactions. If there are already transactions in that account on that date, you will see an alert icon next to the date warning you not to import duplicates.
Finally, give your import a name to help you recognize it later and include any notes that will provide you and your team with helpful context down the line.
Deleting Manual Imports
After importing the transactions, you can always go back and view or remove imports by going to Settings → Import. The three dots next to each import will allow you to remove the import or view the original file in case you need it.