CSV Import

Supported Banks

Open Accountant auto-detects the CSV format based on column headers:

Bank	Detection	Key Columns
Chase	Details, Posting Date	Date, Description, Amount
American Express	Date, Description, Amount	With Amex-specific header pattern
Bank of America (checking)	Date, Description, Amount	BoA checking format
Bank of America (credit card)	Posted Date, Reference Number	BoA credit card format
Generic	Fallback	Any CSV with date, description, amount columns

How to Import

Interactive Mode

Tell Open Accountant to import in plain English:

Import my transactions from ~/Downloads/chase.csv

Import the Amex statement at ~/Documents/amex-march.csv

Headless Mode

oa --run "Import transactions from ~/Downloads/chase.csv"

Format Detection

Open Accountant’s format detector works in this order:

1. OFX — Checks for <OFX> or OFXHEADER markers
2. QIF — Checks for !Type: header
3. CSV — Sniffs column headers to identify bank format:
   • Chase: looks for Details + Posting Date
   • Amex: looks for Amex-specific header pattern
   • BofA: looks for Posted Date + Reference Number or BoA checking headers
   • Generic: falls back to any CSV with recognizable date/amount columns

Deduplication

Open Accountant prevents duplicate imports at two levels:

1. File-level — The SHA-256 hash of each imported file is stored. Re-importing the same file is skipped entirely.
2. Transaction-level — Each transaction gets a computed external_id (hash of date + description + amount). Duplicate transactions across different files are skipped.

Downloading CSVs

Chase

Account → Activity → Download icon → CSV

American Express

Statements & Activity → Download → CSV

Bank of America

Activity tab → Download → Spreadsheet (CSV)

OFX and QIF

Open Accountant also supports OFX (v1.x SGML and v2.x XML) and QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) files. Just point Open Accountant at the file:

Import ~/Downloads/statement.ofx
Import ~/Downloads/quicken-export.qif