How it works

Drop the CSV

From online banking, a card portal or a spreadsheet. Excel and PDF statements work too.

Confirm the columns

Date, description and amount, or separate debit and credit columns. Fix anything that looks off in the review table.

Download OFX

An OFX 1.02 file, the version virtually every program that reads OFX supports.

Why OFX is the safest import format

A CSV can be read in many ways. Is 03/04/2026 March or April? Is a positive amount a deposit or a purchase? Is the third column the payee or a memo? Every import screen asks again, and a wrong answer means cleaning up dozens of transactions. An OFX file settles those questions once: dates are written as YYYYMMDD, amounts are signed from the account holder's side, and the account type is explicit.

What's inside the file

An account block with the account type (checking, savings or credit card) and the account number you enter, so the importer can tell your accounts apart.
A statement period taken from the first and last transaction, or from the dates you set in the review step.
One transaction per row, with type (debit, credit, check), date, amount, a unique ID, the payee name and the full description as memo. Check numbers go to their own field.
The ledger balance when the CSV provides one.

Importing into common programs

Xero

Open the bank account, choose Manage Account > Import a Statement, select the OFX file and import. Check the statement dates against what's already in Xero so you don't import the same period twice.

Wave

Go to Transactions, choose More > Upload a bank statement, select the file and pick the payment account.

GnuCash and Moneydance

Use File > Import > Import OFX/QFX (GnuCash) or File > Import (Moneydance), then match the file to an account. Both remember the match for the next import.

Before you convert

Export the CSV straight from the bank and avoid re-saving it in a spreadsheet, which can rewrite dates.
Convert one account at a time. Use the same account number for every file of that account so your software keeps them together.
Check the sign of a few purchases in the review table. If a card export shows purchases as positive, flip all signs in one click.

Frequently asked questions

Which programs import OFX?

Xero, Wave, Sage, Moneydance, GnuCash, Banktivity, MoneyWiz, YNAB (via file import) and many other accounting and budgeting tools accept OFX bank files. Check your program's import menu for OFX or Open Financial Exchange.

Should I use OFX, QFX or QBO?

Use QBO for QuickBooks and QFX for Quicken. They're OFX with Intuit's bank tag, which those programs expect. For everything else, plain OFX is the safest choice.

Which OFX version is produced?

OFX 1.02 in SGML form. It's the version banks have used for decades and the one importers are most tolerant of. Long descriptions are kept in the memo field, because the payee name is limited to 32 characters in this version.

Does the OFX file include balances?

When the CSV has a running balance column, the closing balance is written to the file's ledger balance. Some programs show it after import so you can compare with the bank.

Why import OFX instead of the CSV itself?

OFX is unambiguous: dates, signs and the account type are fixed by the standard, so there's no column mapping or date format to choose in the target program. Each transaction also has an ID, which lets most programs skip transactions they already imported.