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Categorize credit card transactions from a CSV
A credit card CSV is a good record of where your money goes. It has two traps that a bank account file does not: the plus and minus signs are often reversed, and your card payments can be counted twice.
Step 1: Download your card activity as a CSV
Most card issuers offer a download in the online account. We have steps from the issuer's own help page for American Express and, with less detail, for Chase. For other cards, look for a download or export option next to your list of transactions.
Step 2: Check that purchases count as spending
A bank account file usually shows money going out as a negative number. Many card files do the opposite: purchases are positive and payments are negative, or every number is positive.
- If the file has one amount column and no negative numbers, the categorizer assumes positive numbers are spending. It shows a ticked box saying so. Untick it if that is wrong.
- If the file has both positive and negative numbers, the categorizer leaves the signs as they are. Look at a few large purchases. If they show up as income, tick the box that says positive numbers are spending.
- If the file has separate debit and credit columns, the categorizer takes the signs from those columns, and you do not need the box.
Step 3: Keep card payments out of spending
When you pay your card bill from your current account, the same money shows up twice: once as purchases on the card, and once as a payment out of your current account. Count it only once. The categorizer puts lines such as "AUTOPAY", "PAYMENT RECEIVED" or "CREDIT CARD PAYMENT" into Transfers. If you load several accounts, the monthly totals leave out transfers between them unless you tick "Include transfers between accounts". Issuers word these lines differently, so check that your issuer's payment line actually landed in Transfers. If it did not, add a rule.
Step 4: Check the categories
The categorizer guesses each category from the text of the line. Card descriptions are often short or coded, so look at the "Other" category first and add rules for the merchants you see most often. The app remembers your rules in your browser. In our own small test (37 lines from public sample files), the automatic categories matched our hand labels only about 3 times in 5 for lines that belong in a real category. Expect to spend a few minutes fixing them.
Step 5: Read the monthly totals
The app shows spending by category for each month and can export a summary CSV for your spreadsheet. Each currency is totalled separately, and nothing is converted. To build a budget from the totals, see bank statement CSV to monthly budget.
Limits
- We have tested very few real card exports: one small, older Capital One sample from an open-source project. It was part of the set we used while building the tool, so it is not an independent check. Treat card support as untested for your issuer.
- This is not financial, tax or legal advice. Check the numbers before you rely on them.
Source
This is our own how-to, based on how the categorizer handles amounts and transfers. There is no bank page to cite. The issuer steps are on the linked export guides.
Then categorize it free, offline
Open the categorizer and drop the CSV on the page. It sorts every line into categories and shows monthly totals. The file is read inside your browser tab and is not uploaded.
Free: one file at a time, the latest 3 months of it. Categories are automatic guesses, so check them before you use the numbers for tax. CSV for most banks; PDF only for ADIB statements.