“The open banking export looks different”
Open banking rebuilt how banks share data, and the exports that came with it are shaped by that standard rather than by the older desktop formats. Files that arrive richer in some ways are poorer in others, and long-standing import routines break on both.
Symptoms
The export changed shape after a banking app update New columns appeared and familiar ones vanished Transaction identifiers are longer and no longer match your history
What actually causes it
Different transaction identifiers
Open banking identifiers are generated by a different system than the old export. Your software sees unfamiliar ids for transactions it already holds, so a re-imported period arrives as duplicates rather than matches.
Richer status information
These exports distinguish pending from booked transactions. Importing both means entries appear, change and sometimes vanish as they settle, which reads as instability rather than accuracy.
Merchant data replacing raw descriptions
Cleaned merchant names are easier to read but no longer match the renaming rules you built against the old raw strings, so categorisation silently stops working.
How to fix it
- Run the new file through the checker below and compare its structure against an older one you kept — the differences show up immediately.
- Import only booked transactions where the export lets you choose; pending entries are not final.
- Rebuild renaming and categorisation rules against the new description format rather than expecting the old ones to hold.
- Keep import ranges non-overlapping while the identifiers are unfamiliar, since matching against your history will not work.
Related import problems
Skip the manual edit — fix it automatically
Running an old file and a new one through the same check is the quickest way to see exactly what your bank changed. Free, no signup, no upload.
Open the fixer