How to export your expenses to CSV or PDF, and when to use each
Sooner or later your spending needs to leave the app: for a spreadsheet, an accountant, a shared household budget or an expense claim. Here is which format to use, and what to check before you send it.
CSV or PDF?
- CSV is for working with the numbers. It opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, one transaction per row, so you can sort, filter, build pivot tables or combine it with other data.
- PDF is for reading and sending. It looks the same on every device, cannot be edited by accident, and is the right format for an expense claim, a landlord, or your own records.
If you are not sure, export both: the PDF to keep, the CSV to work with.
What a good export includes
- The date of each transaction.
- A description or merchant.
- The category.
- The amount, exact to the cent, and its currency.
- The period it covers, so nobody has to guess.
Check that the totals match
Before you send or rely on an export, add up the amount column and compare it with the total the app shows for the same period. They should match exactly. If they differ by a few cents, the app is rounding somewhere, and over a year of transactions those cents become real money that nobody can explain.
Opening a CSV correctly
If a CSV opens with every value squeezed into one column, or with dates and amounts mixed up, use your spreadsheet's import option instead of double-clicking the file. Set the separator to comma and the encoding to UTF-8, so currency symbols and non-English text come through correctly.
Keep one currency per export
A file that mixes rupees, dollars and euros in one column cannot be totalled. Export each currency separately, or convert everything to one currency before adding anything up.
A simple monthly routine
At the start of each month, export the previous month as a PDF and save it in one folder. It takes a minute, and after a year you have twelve statements of where your money went, ready for taxes, visas, loan applications or your own review.
How Onetap does it
Onetap exports to CSV for a spreadsheet, or to a PDF statement you can read, send or file. Nothing is rounded away: the total, the bars and the list all agree down to the cent, on screen, in the CSV and in the PDF. Each list keeps its own currency, so an export never mixes currencies together. Export is free for the first three days, then part of Onetap Pro.