“Personal transactions ended up in my business books”
A shared account produces one export containing everything, and the import puts all of it into your business ledger. No export can separate the two, because the distinction exists only in your intent — but catching it before the import is far easier than unpicking it after.
Symptoms
Grocery and household spending appears in business expense reports The accountant asks about transactions you cannot explain Reversing individual entries takes longer than the import saved
What actually causes it
One account, two purposes
The bank sees a single account and exports every transaction in it. Which ones are business is a decision made by you, recorded nowhere in the file, and therefore impossible for any importer to apply.
Rules applied to the wrong ledger
Categorisation rules built for a business file will happily categorise personal spending into business accounts, making the mixture harder to see afterwards.
The whole date range was imported at once
Importing a year in one action gives no natural review point, so mixed transactions are approved in bulk before anyone looks closely.
How to fix it
- Run the file through the checker below to see the exact transaction count you are about to bring in — a number to review against, before importing.
- Import in short ranges, monthly rather than yearly, so review stays practical.
- Categorise personal spending as owner's draw or equity rather than deleting the entries; the money did leave the account and the books should show it.
- Separate the accounts if the mixing is ongoing. No amount of import discipline substitutes for a dedicated business account.
Related import problems
Skip the manual edit — fix it automatically
The checker gives you the transaction count before import, which turns bulk approval into a reviewable list. Free, no signup, no upload.
Open the fixer