The worst part of switching budgeting apps has always been moving day. You find something you like better, and then you realize your reward for switching is re-typing years of accounts, categories, and transactions by hand. It is enough to make most people just stay put. So we got rid of moving day. Envelop now imports your entire budget straight from YNAB and Actual, in about the time it takes to make a coffee.
What actually comes over
The short version: pretty much all of it. When you import from YNAB or Actual, Envelop brings across the whole thing, arranged the way you already had it.
- All your accounts — checking, savings, and credit cards, exactly as you keep them. If an account was set aside as off-budget, it stays off-budget.
- Your categories and groups — every envelope, sorted into the same groups you organized them into.
- What you budgeted each month — not just this month, but every month of assignments in your history.
- Your full transaction history — every payee, amount, and date, including whether each one had cleared.
- Splits stay split — a single purchase you divided across a few categories comes in as one transaction with those same splits intact.
- Transfers stay linked — moving money from checking to savings still reads as one clean transfer, not two loose entries that happen to match.
- Your payees — so your history and autofill pick right back up where they left off.
In other words, you open Envelop for the first time and it already looks like your budget. Because it is your budget.
Credit cards, handled
Credit cards are usually where budget imports quietly fall apart. Not here. Every credit card comes in ready to go, working exactly the way a card you set up yourself would: your spending automatically sets aside money to pay the card, and any balance you are carrying stays on the card without dragging down what you have left to budget. You do not have to connect or configure anything. It simply arrives already working.
Importing from YNAB
YNAB gives you your budget in a single download, and Envelop reads it directly.
In YNAB, open the menu on your plan and choose Export budget data. You will get a file.
Choose Import from YNAB and drop in the file you just downloaded.
Envelop reads the file and builds your budget on the spot. No spreadsheet wrangling, no cleanup.
Importing from Actual
Actual works almost the same way, with one small, friendly extra step. Actual does not keep track of which of your accounts are credit cards, so we ask you. During the import you will see a quick list of your accounts and pick a type for each one — checking, savings, or credit. It takes a few seconds, and it is the only thing we cannot figure out on our own.
In Actual, choose Export data and save the file it gives you.
Choose Import from Actual and upload the file.
Tell us which accounts are checking, savings, or credit cards. We take a good guess first, so usually you are just confirming.
Envelop builds your budget, credit cards and all.
Both importers live right in the setup screen, so you can bring your budget over the moment you sign up, or any time later from Settings.
No spreadsheets, no re-typing
The whole point is that switching should not cost you a weekend. There is no CSV to massage, no manual re-entry, and no half-migrated mess to untangle afterward. You export from your old app, upload the file, and you are budgeting in Envelop with your real history sitting right behind you, exactly where it should be.
Trying a new budgeting app should be about seeing whether you like it, not about whether you have the stamina to rebuild everything from scratch. Now you can just bring it with you and get on with the part that matters.
Bring your budget over
Envelop is free to try for 14 days, no credit card required. Export from YNAB or Actual, upload the file, and pick up right where you left off.
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