This page explains how to move from nYNAB to YNAB4 while retaining as much information as possible. See Appendix 1 for reasons and how to get YNAB4 running.
You will export your current nYNAB budget, then perform some scripted steps on the exported data, and then gradually import it into a new YNAB4 budget. The scripted steps assume that you have Python 3 installed know how to use it. (If anybody wants to improve this guide with setup instructions, PRs are welcome!)
Sadly, there is not much scripted at the moment – you will spend time on manual tasks. But at least, this page supplies a guide for handling this stuff a bit better.
Don't expect an automated and smooth process – this repo is more of a guide with two helper scripts. If things go wrong, you can always delete your YNAB4 data and start again. Since we're starting with a new YNAB4 budget, nothing will be lost.
Split transactions won't be imported as splits, but rather as individual transactions. The memo field will say "Split 1/n" though, so you'll still see which transactions belonged together.
I also don't use many YNAB features including loans and separate credit card accounts, so the import might not work correctly for them. Please open PRs with updates if you find required changes, or comment on the main issue if it worked for you with a specific scenario, so others will know what works and what doesn't!
In nYNAB: Check if any of your category names contain a : or a `, as those are not valid characters in YNAB 4. Change these category names now. Also unhide all of your previously hidden categories, as the import will otherwise not work for them, and you'll have to recategorise them manually. (Not a big deal because they will be easy to filter for, but annoying regardless).
In nYNAB: Export your nYNAB budget by clicking on the budget name in the upper right hand corner → Export Budget.
Download the resulting zip file (once your browser has stopped freezing if your budget is a bit older), and extract the
zip archive. It contains two files: BudgetName as of date - Budget.csv and BudgetName as of date - Register.csv.
I'll refer to these as Budget.csv and Register.csv from here on out.
In YNAB4: Install YNAB 4 (see Appendix 1) and set up a new budget. Set the directory to some
place that works well for you (some location you will backup or sync, for example) in the File → Preferences dialog. Go
to the directory you selected: You will find a directory called My Budget~number.ynab4. Inside, there is a
data1~number directory, and inside that, there is a directory that is just one long UID, looking like
98C499B4-4B29-6CC5-3B7A-F0247E9E2551. Open this directory – it will contain a budgetSettings.ybsettings file and a
Budget.yfull file. If you're using windows you may have to click view hidden items in the file explorer toolbard, to see the directory. I will call this directory "YNAB4 data directory" from here on out.
As a first step, create all your accounts in YNAB 4. Please make sure they are spelt exactly like in nYNAB. Take care to also create closed accounts!
(It's probably not worth to automate this step, especially since the nYNAB export does not contain account information like the account type, so even if we write an importer, we'd still have to manually correct the account type, and people usually have a limited amount of accounts.)
Now's a good time to make a backup of your YNAB4 data directory, because if something down the line fails, you won't want to go through this a second time.
While accounts are limited in number, categories can be a lot, so I wrote a tiny importer. Make sure to close YNAB 4 before running it – it overrides the data file on closing!
python create_categories.py path/to/Budget.csv path/to/ynab4_data_directoryIf you have ever transferred money from account A to B, this transaction shows up in the account A export and the account B export – but since YNAB 4 does not know that we'll provide both imports, it also auto generates the matching transfer transaction, so every transfer exists twice. You could import them anyway but you will need to go through the list of all transactions, filter for Transfer, and delete every other one :/
Thankfully we can do it another way. Open the Register.csv file and in the data tab of excel, select filter. Now using the filter buttons that appear in the first row, filter first by payee and select all that start with "Transfer:". Now filter by inflow or outflow and select only 0.00. This give us a complete list of every transfer in our budget history. More specifically, it shows us one side of every transfer. On the home tab in excel, click Find & Select and chose "Go To Special". Select "Visible Cells only" and click done. We want to delete everything it has selected except for the first row which contains our headers. Hold control and click row 1 to deselect the headers. Now hit delete and save the file.
Now run the second split to take apart the transaction export – YNAB 4 can only import on a per-account basis.
python split_export.py path/to/nynab_data_directory/Register.csvThis will place one CSV file for each account in your working directory, and will replace some terms to make successful imports more likely.
You'll want to import every file next, each under the appropriate account. Make sure to select Year/Month/Date as time format, as well as "Include transactions before account start date".
Next, approve all transactions and recategorise if any did not receive a matching category on import. This shouldn't happen, but probably will in some edge cases. If YNAB can't find a category, it should put the category in the memo field, so that in most cases, you can search for that field, bulk-select and handle the transactions fairly quickly.
Now, chances are, some accounts won't have the correct balance. I'm not quite sure what's going on, to be quite honest. Out of my 7 accounts, 2 were off (one by a bit, one by a bit more), the other five came out correct. Things to check:
- An imported starting balance can be marked incorrectly, either change the flow direction or delete it.
- Mark a suspect time period (first and last month / year / quarter) in both nYNAB and YNAB 4 and compare the totals.
- Did scheduled transactions get imported too? If your balance is too high check that future transations haven't been imported.
- Sometimes the starting balance might be weird, if you see any transations that are huge and going into outflow right at the start of your budget, labeled starting balance, try deleting these.
Now, once all the account totals are correct: you can be done. Just copy your current category bucket total into your YNAB 4, and you're ready to go. Congratulations!
Unless you want your budget history to be imported, too – do you want to know how much money you set aside for vacation in 2017? … If so: quit YNAB 4 and make a backup of the directory! Seriously: Your current state is very good and you really don't want to repeat the work you just did if the budget import screws up somehow.
Then run:
python import_budgets.py path/to/Budget.csv path/to/ynab4_data_directoryAll your budget data should get imported. Please let me know if this doesn't work – I'm making a few assumptions but most currency formats should be recognized. You might also try entering a random number into your first month (e.g. April 2016) in YNAB 4 if the import fails – this will cause YNAB to create all the monthly buckets, so that the importer only has to add the correct numbers.
If your import seems to be getting hung up on hidden categories, try setting the pass_category_errors variable in import_budgets.py
to true, this will skip over these errors and if you only have a few hidden categories it might be worth having most of your
buget history rather than none of it.
When you open YNAB 4, the total budgeted numbers per category should be correct – if you use future budgeting a lot, it might look off at first, because you'll have large visible numbers as "not budgeted". These numbers are correct though, and should line up with what you see in the breakdown when you click the month's total in nYNAB.
YNAB 4 is a desktop application that was the predecessor of the web version, commonly called nYNAB (or just YNAB). YNAB 4 did not have a subscription model, but can't be purchased anymore. If you bought it back in the day, you can still use your activation key. You might also have bought it on Steam, where it will still be activated for you.
If you didn't purchase YNAB 4, you can still download it and run through the 1-month trial. There are trivial ways to extend or repeat or circumvent the trial duration, however, as those are naturally against the TOS of YNAB, I will not document or endorse them here.