Guides › Track money sent home · العربية
Track the money you send home from your UAE bank statement
If you send money to family from the UAE, you may want to know how much, and when, over the year. Your statement already records each transfer. This guide shows how to pick those lines out and total them by month, so you know what you sent and when.
Be clear about what the tool does and does not have
The categorizer has no category called "remittance". Its categories are Income, Rent / utilities, Transfers, Subscriptions, Dining, Groceries, Transport, Cash, Fees, Shopping, Health and Other. The method below uses "Transfers" for the money you send home, with your own rules to pick the lines. It does not say how much a transfer cost you in fees or in exchange rate, and it does not convert currencies.
Step 1: Get your statement
Use a CSV from your bank if it offers one. For ADIB, the tool reads the PDF e-statement directly; see ADIB statement PDF to Excel or CSV. PDF import works for ADIB only. Other UAE banks: we could not confirm CSV export for any UAE retail bank, so check your own app.
Step 2: Find the lines for money sent abroad
Open the categorizer, drop in the file, and use the search box on the transaction table. Search for the words your own statement uses for transfers abroad or to a named person. We do not know the wording for any bank, and it differs between banks and between ways of sending (bank transfer, app, exchange house), so read your lines first.
Step 3: Add a rule that tags them as Transfers
For each wording you found, add a rule: "If the text contains" that wording, category "Transfers". Rules are kept in your browser only and are applied to the next file you load too. Keep rules specific. A word like "transfer" alone may also catch moves between your own accounts.
Step 4: Show the transfers in the monthly totals
By default, Transfers are left out of the monthly spending totals, because moving money between your own accounts is not spending. Tick "Include transfers between accounts" to bring them in. The Transfers row then shows a monthly total for every line in that category, which will include any own-account moves that were not separated out.
To keep them apart, filter the transaction table to the Transfers category and look at the lines; or export the categorized CSV and filter it in Excel or Google Sheets by the wording of your transfer lines.
Step 5: Compare month to month
Look at the typical month, the highest, and the lowest. If the amount is meant to be steady, you can spot a month that was different. Each currency is totalled separately; if you send in one currency and your account is in AED, the statement amount is the AED amount leaving your account.
Limits
- Not financial advice, and not a remittance comparison. We make no claim about any exchange house or transfer service.
- Rules are only as good as the wording you give them. A transfer that uses wording you did not match stays in another category. Check the totals against your statement.
- PDF import: ADIB only, one real statement tested (545 of 546 rows read, 543 of 544 balance checks matched).
- Free: one file at a time, latest 3 months. Pro ($19, one payment) removes that limit. See pricing.
Source
This is our own how-to, not a bank page. The app behaviour (categories, rules, transfers setting) is from the app itself.
Try it on your statement, free
Free: one file at a time, latest 3 months of it. CSV for most banks; PDF only for ADIB statements.