How to move your checkbook history to a new app
It takes two things: a CSV file out of the app you are leaving, and the import screen in BalanceWright. The first import is built to take a whole history at once, up to 2,000 rows, before you have paid for anything.
Step one works whatever you move to. Getting a CSV out of your old app is worth doing today even if you never install this one, because a history you hold a copy of is a history that app can no longer lose for you. Step two is the same screen and the same file on iPhone and Android; only the file picker it opens is different, and that is said where it matters below.
The short version
- 01In the app you are leaving, look for Export, Backup, CSV or Share, and save the file somewhere your phone can reach it.
- 02In BalanceWright, open the account the history belongs in, then Settings, then Your data, then Import from a CSV.
- 03Read the preview: the columns it matched, the way it read your dates, and any line it could not read. Nothing is written to your register until you tap the button at the bottom.
Get a CSV out of the app you are leaving
The exact taps vary by app, and they change between versions, so we are not going to pretend to know your menu. Look for one of these words:
- Export
- Backup
- CSV
- Share, Send, or Email a copy
It usually sits in Settings, or behind the share icon on the register itself.
Several checkbook apps state an export on their own store listing. This is what those listings said in August 2026. It is what the listing says, not something we have tested for you, and listings change, so check yours. Three of them were read on the App Store and two on Google Play, so there is something here whichever phone your old register is on.
| App | Its listing says |
|---|---|
| Checkbook — Account Tracker | CSV, QIF and HTML |
| Balance My Checkbook | CSV |
| The Checkbook | CSV |
| Checkbook Plus | CSV |
| Simple Checkbook Ledger | An Excel spreadsheet file |
If you are offered a choice of formats, choose CSV. If the only option is a spreadsheet file, open it on a computer and use Save As to write a CSV.
Then get the file onto the phone. Emailing it to yourself and opening the attachment works on either phone, and so does a cloud folder you already use.
On an iPhone, the file needs to be somewhere the Files app can see it: On My iPhone, or iCloud Drive if you use it, or a Google Drive or Dropbox folder you have added to Files. On an Android phone it needs to be somewhere the file picker can see it, which usually means Downloads, Google Drive, or wherever your email app puts what you save. If you can find the file in that picker, the app can read it.
Open the account, then Settings, then Import from a CSV
Bring your history over from another app with a CSV file, matching up the columns as you go.
In BalanceWright, tap Settings, then under Your data tap Import from a CSV, then Choose a file. If you keep more than one account, open the account you want the history to land in first, because the rows go into the account you have open in the register.
Choose a file opens the Files screen on an iPhone — the same folders the Files app shows you — and the phone’s own file picker on Android. Both are filtered to CSV and plain text, so a spreadsheet file is greyed out and cannot be chosen. If your old app only gave you a spreadsheet, that is why you cannot tap it. Go back, save it again as a CSV, and it will be there to choose.
The file does not have to use commas. Semicolons and tabs are read as well, and a CSV saved by Excel is fine. The one hard limit at this step is size: a file over 10 MB is turned away as too big to be a register export, with a message saying so.
Read the preview before you agree to anything
Nothing is written to your register until you tap the button at the bottom, which reads Add and then the number of entries. First you get a screen that shows you four things.
How many entries it read
With the first five of them shown in full — payee, date and amount — so you can hold them up against the old app before you agree to anything.
Which column it took for what
Date, payee, amount, money out and money in when those are separate columns, check number, category and memo. It guesses from your headings, and you tap to change any one it guessed wrong.
How it read your dates
If your dates are written with slashes or dashes, it tells you whether it read them as month and day or day and month. Check one against a statement. A silently wrong date is worse than a refused one.
How many lines it could not read
Listed by line number with the reason for each. Those lines are left out rather than guessed at, and you can write them in by hand afterwards.
What comes in, and what gets left out
A row comes in
- It needs a real date and a real amount. That is the whole requirement.
- A payee is optional, so a row with a blank description still comes in as long as the date and the amount are there.
- Amounts can be written $1,234.56, or in parentheses for money out.
- Money out and money in can be two separate columns, or one column with a minus sign. Both are read.
A row is left out when
- The date cannot be read.
- The amount cannot be read.
- The amount is zero, so there is nothing to record.
- The row has a figure in both the money out and the money in column, so there is no way to tell which way the money moved.
Every skipped line is named by its line number with the reason it was skipped, so you can write those few in by hand afterwards. Anything genuinely ambiguous is left out with a reason rather than guessed at, because a wrong amount you cannot trace is the exact thing this app exists to prevent.
The first import is meant to take all of it
The app is a free download and everything works from the first day — entries, reconciling, search, recurring bills, transfers, export and backup. It asks for the one-time $9.99 after you balance your first statement, or after 100 entries, whichever comes first.
A history of 400 or 900 rows would spend that in one tap, before you had written a single entry of your own or seen the app do the thing you would be paying for. So there is a one-time allowance for bringing a history across:
- It brings the whole file in, up to 2,000 rows.
- It does not use up any of your 100 free entries, so you keep those for your own writing.
- It is used only when it is needed. If your file fits in what you have left anyway, the allowance is untouched and still there for later.
- You get one of them. It is remembered on the phone itself, so restoring a backup does not hand it back.
- It opens for a register you have not started yet. If you have already balanced a statement in the app, the allowance no longer opens, and bringing more history across means unlocking the register first.
That 2,000 is a sanity guard on the free import, not a ceiling on the app. A decade of a real register is a few thousand lines, and a file far past that usually means the wrong file or the wrong column, which you should see turned away rather than written. If your history genuinely is larger, unlocking the register removes the number altogether: an unlocked register never consults the allowance at all, and the message that turns the file away says so and takes you there.
The whole file, or none of it
We do not let the first hundred rows in and quietly drop the rest. A history cut off partway cannot be reconciled against any statement, and you would never see it happen. So the import either takes the file or turns it away, and a refusal always names the reason and ends the same way: your register is unchanged.
The rows are written in one go rather than one at a time, so if it fails halfway through, nothing is added and the register is exactly as you left it.
After it lands, balance one statement
Every imported entry arrives marked outstanding until you reconcile it. Get your most recent statement, start a reconcile, and tick off what has cleared.
Tick each entry off against your paper statement and watch the difference land on $0.00. Once you lock a statement it is settled, and an app update does not rewrite it.
That is the moment the register becomes yours, and it is the honest test of any checkbook app. It is also the test we would rather you ran on us before you pay us anything, which is why the trial ends there and not on a timer.
And if you ever want to leave us the same way
Settings, then Export, writes your register out as a CSV with every column it keeps:
The finished file goes to the share sheet, the same one the rest of your phone uses, so nothing chooses a destination for you. Mail it to yourself, drop it into a folder, or hand it to whatever you use to keep documents — on either phone, it is your file from that point on.
This same import screen reads that file back. The dates, payees, check numbers, categories, memos and amounts return, the running balance is worked out again from them, and the entries come back marked outstanding for you to reconcile. Any register exports to a CSV file or a printable PDF, whenever you want, and that keeps working whether or not you have paid.
Your history should be able to walk in and walk out again without anyone’s permission. That is the test we are asking you to run on us first.
Bring your history across, then balance one statement
Free to try. $9.99 once to keep writing. The app is a free download and everything works from the first day — entries, reconciling, search, recurring bills, transfers, export and backup. It asks for the one-time $9.99 after you balance your first statement, or after 100 entries, whichever comes first.
