Five CSV import mistakes that turn ten minutes into an hour

CSV files are one of the simplest formats for moving transactions out of your bank and into a budgeting tool. Even so, it is surprising how often something goes sideways.

Amounts come in as text instead of numbers. Dates disappear. Or you suddenly have twice as many transactions as you exported. We have seen it a hundred times, and the good news is that the fixes are simple once you know what to look for.

Here are the five mistakes that cost most people the most time, and how to clear each one in a couple of minutes.

Mistake 1: The wrong separator (comma or semicolon)

CSV stands for "Comma Separated Values", but that is not the whole story. In Norway and many other European countries, banks use a semicolon (;) as the separator instead of a comma. If you open the CSV in Excel or a text editor and the columns all look squashed together on the same line, a separator mismatch is almost certainly the cause.

Fix: Open the file in a text editor (Notepad or Sublime) and look at the first line. If it reads "Dato;Beskrivelse;Beløp" your bank uses semicolons. Most budgeting apps let you pick the separator at import time, so just choose the right one.

If that option is not there, run "Find and replace" in your text editor and swap every semicolon for a comma before importing again.

Mistake 2: The wrong character encoding

Norwegian letters like æ, ø and å can look strange after import. Instead of "Dørgruppen" or "Årnes marked" you might see odd characters like "D¸rgruppen" or "Ã…rnes marked". This happens when the encoding the file was saved with does not match what the system expects.

The two encodings you'll meet are UTF-8 (the modern standard) and Latin-1 (older, but still around). If the import flow offers a choice, pick UTF-8 first.

Fix: Save the CSV again with the right encoding. From Excel, choose "Save as", select the format "CSV (comma-separated)" and make sure UTF-8 is selected. If your tool does not give you the option, open the file in a text editor, confirm it is UTF-8, and save again.

Mistake 3: Mismatched date formats

Banks use different date formats. Some use DD.MM.YYYY (so 2 February reads as "02.02.2026"), others use YYYY-MM-DD (like "2026-02-02"). If the system expects one format but receives another, dates either get parsed as plain text or end up wrong altogether.

Fix: Check the documentation for the bank or the system you are importing into. If you need to convert between date formats, the simplest route is to open the file in Excel, build a helper column with a formula, and paste the result back into the original column. Most budgeting apps show a preview that lets you spot a misread date before you confirm the import.

Mistake 4: Duplicates from overlapping imports

You imported transactions for 1 to 31 January, then later imported a fresh file covering 28 January to 28 February. Now January is in there twice.

Fix: Always check the latest date already in the system before you import a new file. Where you can, export only the dates you do not yet have. If duplicates have already slipped in, search for them and delete them by hand. Most budgeting apps have a search field where you can find identical amounts, dates and descriptions next to each other.

Mistake 5: Amounts treated as text

The most frustrating one: your amounts come through as text ("1234.50") instead of numbers. You cannot sum them, and the sort order goes haywire.

Fix: This is almost always the decimal separator. In Norway we use a comma (1234,50), but many systems expect a full stop (1234.50). Open the CSV in a text editor and see which one is in use. If you need to swap commas for full stops (or the other way around), use "Find and replace", carefully.

A quick checklist before you import

1. Open the CSV in a text editor and check the first line. Do the separators look right?
2. Check that the first row is headers (Dato, Beløp, Beskrivelse), not data.
3. Pick UTF-8 as the encoding in the system.
4. Compare the date format with what the system expects.
5. Check the latest transaction date already in your system before importing a new file.

Once those five mistakes are out of the way, CSV import goes from frustration to a five-minute weekly routine.

Use your budgeting tool the right way

If you use Luma or a similar budgeting tool, importing is often the first step toward an honest overview. Take the time to do it properly the first round, and you will not have to go back and clean up later. Most app providers also publish an import guide that shows exactly which formats work best.

Bottom line: when CSV import works, you save hours of manual entry. Spend five minutes checking the formats up front.