Yay! You’ve moved to Wallet. But, nay! You’ve a whole lot of transaction data from previous years stored elsewhere. A list that you meticulously and diligently created one at a time over the years. We feel you and that’s why we rolled out our new feature Imports.
We do not want your efforts to go wasted and we want you to be able to bring in all your data whenever you want to Wallet. Right in the first few days of the release of the new Imports feature, we heard back from Danilo Prado, one of our users from Dublin, Ireland, on how he had successfully imported over 2000 transactions to Wallet from the personal finance app that he was using previously. “The whole process, right from exporting transactions from the old app to finishing up everything on Wallet, took me about 20 minutes,” says Dan, adding that, “only because I chose to work on my files a bit before importing to Wallet. If I had just exported from old app and imported straight into Wallet, I bet, it would have taken me not more than 5 minutes.”
We were excited on hearing this and decided to dig in a bit deeper to get to know how Wallet has helped Dan manage his money better.
Here’s his story!
Hi Dan! Could you tell us a bit more about yourself?
Sure. I’m Danilo Prado, 33 years old. I’m Brazilian, from the big capital Sao Paulo, but now I’ve been living in Dublin, Ireland, for about seven years. I work as a design manager at a Marketing/IT company called Net Affinity that helps hotels increase their bookings through their website. I’m also a photography enthusiast and an active instagrammer.
How long have you been using Wallet and what do you use it for?
I’ve been using Wallet for a little more than three months now. About two years ago, I felt the need to track my money better because I was spending too much and wasn’t sure where my money was going. That’s when I decided to look for a money tracker app. I was using a different expense manager app till now.
How did you hear about Wallet?
I found Wallet in the Google Play store. Being frustrated with my money tracker app at that time (I had installed three apps, including Wallet, to see which could be the best substitute), I decided to give it a try. After using all three of them simultaneously for a week, I picked Wallet to be my money partner.
What, according to you, sets it apart from the other apps that you had used?
I am photographer, a UI/UX and a Web Designer. So the design of an app is very important to me. It needs to look good, especially because I would be using it everyday to track my expenses. From the other apps I tested, Wallet’s design and interface caught my attention. It has a clean and friendly interface. Of course, the features are also very well-built and stable. And, all my transactions were perfectly synced whenever I switched between the mobile and web app.
So coming to what brought us here, Dan. You’ve successfully used our latest feature Imports to get over 2000 transactions from a different app. Why did you decide to Import your data?
I started using Wallet in March 2017, but before this, I was using another app for about two years. I had more than 2000 transactions in there. So I was planning to manually add all transactions of at least January and February 2017 and then just forget about the other two years. Lucky me that I was lazy and Wallet launched this feature before I did anything. 🙂
Could you tell us the steps you took to Import your data?
The first thing I did, was to read the instructions provided by Wallet very carefully. It was very detailed and I didn’t have any doubts at all.
Then I went to my old app and exported a XLS file containing almost 2000 transactions from my last two years of expense tracking. Each row of this XLS was a transaction, and each column was a field (date, note, amount etc) for that transaction.
The instructions sent to me by Wallet was very clear stating that the app would try to match old categories with Wallet’s categories the best way possible. Even with this statement, I decided to do some work on the XLS myself.
I compared my old categories and decided, based on the Wallet categories, what these would be converted to. So, for example, before I had individual categories for supermarkets (like Tesco, Dunnes, Lidl etc), but now in Wallet I had only “Groceries”. So I performed a simple Find/Replace on this XLS file, replaced the categories to match those of Wallet. Within 10 minutes, all my old transactions were ready to be imported.
Once I was happy fine-tuning the categories, I exported this XLS file to CSV format. I sent my CSV file to the unique email address specified in the instruction email.
Wallet notifies you when it receives an import file and you confirm this to import it into the account of your choice. The time from sending the e-mail to getting the app notification was literally instant.
After opening the app and going into Imports, I could see the CSV file and I went on to confirm the old fields with the new ones, such as amount, data and note. Wallet recognized all my data without any fuss and then all I had to do was tap on “Import” to confirm the action.
After this, all my 2000 transactions were imported with perfect categories.
The whole process, from exporting the transactions from the old app to finishing up everything on Wallet, took me about 20 minutes. But that was only because I chose to work on the categories in my file before importing to Wallet. If I had just exported from the old app and imported straight into Wallet, I bet, it would have taken only five minutes!
Great work, Dan! We’re glad that imports worked perfectly for you. Do you think you’d keep using this feature to track or reconcile your transactions?
The Imports feature was essential in bringing 2 years of my transaction data to Wallet. If not for it, I would’ve manually entered transactions for only a month or two and that would be it. It wasn’t hard at all, you just need to follow the instructions and you’ll be in good hands.
I think I could use Imports again if I have a few transactions I forgot to add, but I don’t want to add them manually. I could create a simple table on Excel or Google Spreadsheets and import the table (as a CSV file) later into Wallet. By the way, this could be a nice feature on the web app as well.
Other than Imports, what are your favorite features in Wallet?
“Labels” is one of my favorite features. The Categories can sometimes be too strict and not that flexible. So combining Labels with Categories, I’ve found, is a good way to identify my records. For example, recently I went on a trip to Barcelona and I created a special Label for it. So every expense on that trip has the label “Barcelona” on it.
Later on, if I wanted to check how much I spent during the trip, I would just use a filter with the “Barcelona” label. It’s a great way to see how much I spent on accommodation, food, tourist attractions etc on that trip alone. So I combined Labels with Categories to get a detailed report and chart of my spending. I use Labels for everything — for places, for identifying costs I need to split with friends, everything. I think it’s a very versatile feature.
Do you follow a budget? And, has Wallet helped you stick to it? If so, how.
I created some monthly budgets for Shopping, Groceries, Taxi and some other expense categories. It feels good to keep track of the expenses for a specific month and it helps that Wallet shows a forecast of your spendingand even alerts you if you’re spending too much on that budget.
What is the biggest lesson you learned about money after having used Wallet?
The biggest lesson I learned is to rely on the stats and the numbers you see on the app. If you’re overspending those budgets month after month, you need to review some things. Stop and look what you could live without and wouldn’t even miss. Those extra channels on your cable TV? The gym membership, are you really using it? Or that enormous mobile data plan that is ridiculous and you’ll never reach the maximum usage. Start to cut costs here and there and you won’t believe how much of a difference it will make in the long term. Trust me, it is really rewarding to start seeing green stats month after month on Wallet with a “+” on it.
How has your attitude towards money management changed after using Wallet?
I feel like I have more control over my money.
Every little penny goes into Wallet and to be honest, it is addictive. It’s nice to see the stats of your financial behavior piling up and taking shape.
Understanding where you’re spending too much, where you could spend more. Even though you really believe you know what you’re doing with your money if you do not track, you don’t really know. So the best thing to do if you have never managed you money before is to: download Wallet, be patient and start adding every transaction you make. Once you do this for a month or two, you’ll start to have a bigger, better picture of your expenses. And, you’ll know how to use your money in the best way.
What’s your Wallet story?
Share your own Wallet success story with us and get featured on our blog! Send in your experiences to us at jan@www-2.budgetbakers.com. Make sure to write “Wallet helped me!” in the subject line. We can’t wait to hear from you.
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