Earmarkr imports a YNAB export directly. Your accounts, categories, transactions, transfers, and each month's budgeted amounts come across, and the import shows you the projected result before writing anything.
The import is a pure converter. Once it's done, nothing in your budget is marked "imported" — it behaves exactly as if you'd built it by hand.
Before you start
- This takes about 15 minutes for a typical budget, most of it reviewing rather than waiting.
- Nothing is written until the final step. You can leave at any point before that.
- It's safe to run twice. The import is idempotent — re-running it won't duplicate anything.
1. Export from YNAB
In YNAB on the web, open your budget, then Budget Settings → Export budget. You'll download a
.zip containing two CSV files — a Register and a Plan.
Upload the .zip as-is. Don't unzip it. Earmarkr opens it in your browser and finds both files.
If you only have the individual CSVs, they still work — use the Advanced option on the upload step.
2. Map your accounts
Every YNAB account is listed with a suggested type and budget setting. Check three things per row:
- Type — checking, savings, credit card, loan, mortgage, or tracking. This drives the arithmetic, so it matters more than the name.
- On-budget or tracking — on-budget accounts fund your categories. Investments and similar should be tracking.
- Map to — if you already created the account in Earmarkr, point at it here instead of creating a duplicate.
Don't import is pre-ticked for loans that net to about $0.00 — old cars, paid-off mortgages, accounts superseded by a newer one. Untick any you want to keep.
3. Review balances
This is the step that earns your trust in the result, so don't skip it.
Each account shows its arithmetic in full:
opening balance + N transactions = ending balance
Compare each ending balance against YNAB. They should match to the cent. You can rename an account or override its opening balance inline here.
Loans and mortgages need attention. A YNAB loan with payment activity will not match, and that's not a bug — see why loan balances need confirming. Any affected account is flagged and must be resolved before you can continue.
4. Rename and merge categories
Rename anything you want, and merge categories you'd rather combine — either into an existing Earmarkr category or into another YNAB one. Merging folds the transactions and the budgeted amounts together, so nothing is lost.
Your "Credit Card Payments" group maps onto Earmarkr's card payment categories automatically. "Inflow: Ready to Assign" becomes the income category.
5. Check the projected budget
Before writing anything, Earmarkr runs the real budgeting engine over your data and shows exactly what you'll get:
- Your Ready to Assign
- Every category's Available
- Every card's reserve
These are not estimates — they're produced by the same engine that will run your budget, so what you see is what you'll get.
Compare Ready to Assign against YNAB's. They should be very close. If they're far apart, go back and check account types on step 2 — a credit card typed as checking is the usual cause.
6. Finish
The final screen gives you a per-account reconciliation table: expected balance, computed balance, and the difference. Every row should read $0.00 difference.
Anything that doesn't reconcile is reported honestly rather than quietly adjusted. If you see a non-zero row, contact support with the account name and the two figures.
Starting fresh
By default the import merges into whatever is already in your budget.
If you're re-importing after a trial run, tick Start fresh on the projected-budget step. It wipes imported and manual data first — transactions, categories, allocations, rules, and manual accounts — then imports clean.
This is destructive and can't be undone. You'll be asked to type START FRESH to confirm. It
keeps your login, your bank connections, and any bank-synced accounts.
What doesn't come across
- Split transactions import as individual categorized rows rather than a reconstructed parent with children. Your balances and budget still tie exactly.
- Scheduled transactions aren't imported. Recreate them under Scheduled.
- Non-USD budgets aren't supported yet.
What to look at first afterwards
- Your card reserves. Open Cards — the reserve and gap for each card should reflect what you actually owe. How credit cards work explains the numbers.
- Needs review. Anything uncategorized is badged in the sidebar.
- Connect your banks so new transactions flow in automatically.
A note on months before your import
Earmarkr sets a budget start month at your current month and seeds your category balances from YNAB's as-of snapshot. That's what makes the numbers reconcile without rebuilding years of history.
Months before that boundary are history: your transactions, balances, net worth, and reports all cover your full history, but budget activity starts at the boundary. If you page back before it, expect empty months — the data is there, it just isn't budgeted.