Your budgeting history is a record of your own life: what you earned, what you spent, the months you got ahead and the months you didn’t. It should be yours to take anywhere. Most budgeting apps are happy to let you type data in and a lot less helpful when you want it back out.
If you use EveryDollar and you want a copy of your budget and transactions, here are the two ways to do it, and the catches to watch for with each.
The fast way: a free browser extension
We built a small, free tool for exactly this job: the EveryDollar CSV Exporter, a Chrome extension. Install it, open your EveryDollar budget the way you always do, and it reads what’s on screen and hands you two CSV files, one for your budget and one for your transactions.
It does the tedious parts for you:
- It goes back as far as you want. Just this month, or a year, or everything.
- It scrolls the whole transaction list. EveryDollar loads older transactions only as you scroll, so a quick copy-paste misses most of them. The tool scrolls to the bottom so nothing is left behind.
- It resolves your splits. A transaction split across three categories comes out as three rows with the right amounts, not one lump.
- It brings your notes along. Leave the notes option on and any note you added to a transaction comes out with it.
It runs entirely in your browser. Nothing about your budget is sent to us, there’s no account to create, and the files download straight to your computer. Uninstall it afterward and nothing of yours is left behind, because nothing of yours ever left your machine.
The manual way: EveryDollar’s own export
EveryDollar has a built-in export in its web app. The exact location has moved around over the years and can depend on your plan, so look under your transactions or your account settings for a download or export option. If you can’t find it, their support team can send you a copy of your data.
Two things to know before you rely on it:
- Check your splits. Depending on the format, a split transaction may come out as a single line rather than one line per category. If you split a lot of transactions, read the file before you trust it.
- Check the date range. Make sure the export covers as far back as you actually want. A single month is quick, but a year of history is what makes your first reports and trends useful.
Either file is a fine starting point. The extension exists because it removes the guesswork, not because the manual route doesn’t work.
What to do with the CSV
Once you have the file, it’s yours to use however you like:
- Keep it as a backup. A CSV opens in any spreadsheet and will still open in ten years. That alone is worth doing once a year.
- Analyze it. Sort, filter, and total your own spending without any app’s opinion about how to show it. Our EveryDollar to Excel guide shows the import steps and a pivot table that does most of the work.
- Move it to another budgeting app. Any tool worth using can import a transaction CSV.
If you’re considering switching from EveryDollar, that last one is the point. CalmDollar’s importer reads these files directly, with a one-click EveryDollar preset that maps the columns for you, and it’s duplicate-safe, so re-running a file never doubles your history. The migration guide walks through the whole thing, and most people finish in about fifteen minutes.
But you don’t have to switch to anything. The reason to export your data is that it’s yours. Getting a clean copy in your hands, today, is the whole win. What you do next is up to you.
