Exporting Your Data
Your financial data is YOURS. HOB lets you export what you've entered - transactions, budgets, accounts, categories, investments, and more - as CSV files. Use them for your own records, analysis in Excel, or migration to another tool. This guide shows you how.
🚫 Exports Cannot Be Re-Imported Into HOB
HOB does not currently support importing an export back in, for any of the three export types below. These files are for your own records, tax prep, analysis, or migrating to another tool - they are not a restorable backup. If you ever lose access to your HOB account, an export can't be used to recreate it inside HOB, so keeping exports is not a substitute for HOB itself being available.
What You Can Export
Go to Settings → Export Your Data to reach the export page. There are three downloads available, each a plain CSV or a ZIP of CSVs that open in any spreadsheet program:
📝 All Transactions
A ZIP with one CSV per account, so you can review or file each account's history separately.
📈 Investment Transactions
A single CSV of every stock purchase and sale across your investment accounts.
📦 Complete Data Export
One ZIP with everything else: accounts, categories, category/budget groups, budgeted amounts, transactions (same per-account structure as above), investments, goals, and your debt payoff balance history.
File format: All exports are CSV (Comma-Separated Values) files that open in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, or any spreadsheet program. There's currently no date range or account/category filtering on the export page itself - each export always covers everything you have.
Exporting Transactions
This is the most common export - your complete transaction history, split out by account.
To export transactions:
- Go to Settings → Export Your Data (or open /export directly)
- Under All Transactions, click Download ZIP
- Save the ZIP, then unzip it - you'll get one CSV per account
📝 What's Included
Each row in each account's CSV contains:
- • Date
- • Type (Income or Expense)
- • Amount
- • Payee
- • Category
- • Notes
- • Cleared (Yes/No)
- • Is Transfer (Yes/No)
- • Split Group ID (shared across rows that came from the same split transaction)
Exporting Investment Transactions
A single CSV of every stock purchase and sale you've logged, across all your investment accounts.
To export investment transactions:
- Go to Settings → Export Your Data (or open /export directly)
- Under Investment Transactions, click Download CSV
📈 What's Included
Each row contains:
- • Date
- • Ticker
- • Type
- • Shares (to 6 decimal places)
- • Price Per Share
- • Total Value
- • Account
- • Notes
Exporting Budget Data
Budget amounts are included in the Complete Data Export ZIP, as budget.csv - there's no separate standalone budget export.
What's included:
- Year and month
- Category name
- Budget group
- Budgeted amount
- Notes
⚠️ What's NOT included
This file only has what you budgeted, not what you actually spent, and not rollover amounts - HOB calculates those live from your transactions each time a budget report loads, rather than storing them anywhere. You can reconstruct both yourself in Excel: your budgeted amounts are here, and every transaction (with its category) is in the Transactions export - a pivot table summing transactions by category and month gets you actual spending, and rollover is just each month's leftover carried into the next.
Exporting Accounts and Categories
Like budget data, accounts and categories are part of the Complete Data Export ZIP - there's no standalone export for either one.
accounts.csv includes:
- Account name
- Account type (Checking, Savings, Credit Card, Loan, Line of Credit, Investment, etc.)
- Personal or Business
- Opening balance
- Current balance
- Interest rate (if set)
- Archived (Yes/No)
categories.csv includes:
- Category name
- Type (Income/Expense)
- Category group and budget group
- Personal or Business
- Schedule reference (for business categories, if you've set one)
- Include in budget, rollover enabled, show on dashboard (each Yes/No)
- Archived at (blank if not archived)
Opening CSV Files
Once you've exported, here's how to open and use your CSV files.
In Excel:
- Open Excel
- Go to File → Open
- Select your CSV file
- Excel automatically formats it as a spreadsheet
In Google Sheets:
- Go to Google Sheets
- Click File → Import
- Upload your CSV file
- Choose "Replace spreadsheet" or "Create new spreadsheet"
⚠️ Currency Formatting
Dollar amounts may import as plain numbers. Select the amount column and format it as currency to see dollar signs.
What to Do with Exports
Now that you have your data, here are some powerful ways to use it:
📊 Create Custom Charts
Use Excel's charting tools to visualize spending trends, income vs expenses over time, or category breakdowns HOB doesn't offer yet.
🗂️ Keep Your Own Copy
Export your data periodically and store the files in Google Drive, Dropbox, or an external drive, so you have your own record of everything you've entered. As noted above, this is a copy of your data for your own records, not a restorable backup - HOB doesn't support re-importing an export, so it isn't a substitute for HOB itself being available.
🔍 Advanced Analysis
Use Excel pivot tables to slice and dice your data - spending by day of week, monthly averages by category, year-over-year comparisons, or your own actual-vs-budget and rollover calculations.
🤝 Share with Professionals
Meeting with a financial advisor or accountant? Export your transactions and send them the CSV. Universal format, works anywhere.
📄 Tax Preparation
If you track schedule references on your business categories, the Schedule Reference report groups everything by tax line for you - no CSV filtering needed. Otherwise, export transactions and filter to tax-relevant categories yourself in Excel before handing off to your preparer.
🔄 Migration
Switching to another budgeting tool? Export everything from HOB. Many tools can import CSV files, making migration easier. (This is for moving to a different tool - HOB itself can't import these files back in.)
Tips for Working with Exported Data
Keep your exports organized:
Create a folder structure like "HOB Exports/2026" so you can find old exports easily.
Export periodically for your own records:
Set a quarterly reminder to download the Complete Data Export and save it to cloud storage, so you always have a current copy of what you've entered.
Clean up in Excel if needed:
Since exports don't currently support date-range or category filtering, you can delete rows or columns you don't need, sort by any field, or add calculated columns (like actual spending, rollover, or "Days Since Transaction") once the file is open in your spreadsheet program.
✅ Best Practice
At the end of each year, download a Complete Data Export and file it away. This creates a record of your financial history for that year that you control.
Privacy and Security
Your exported files contain sensitive financial information. Here's how to keep them safe:
Storage recommendations:
- Cloud storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud - encrypted and backed up automatically
- External drive: Keep a copy on an external hard drive stored securely
- Password-protected: If emailing to yourself or advisor, password-protect the file or use a secure file sharing service
What NOT to do:
- ❌ Don't leave files in your Downloads folder indefinitely
- ❌ Don't email unencrypted CSVs to public email addresses
- ❌ Don't store on shared/public computers
- ❌ Don't share via unsecured file sharing sites
🔒 Remember
These CSV files contain your complete financial history - account names, amounts, merchants. Treat them like you'd treat your bank statements!
Troubleshooting Exports
File won't open in Excel:
Make sure the file extension is .csv. If it downloaded as .txt, rename it to .csv and try again.
Numbers look weird (dates, amounts):
This is usually a formatting issue. Select the column and apply the correct format (Date, Currency, etc.) in your spreadsheet program.
One account's transactions CSV is empty:
That account simply has no transactions on it yet - every account gets a file in the ZIP, even ones with zero activity, so an empty file for one account doesn't mean anything is missing elsewhere.
Investments export is empty:
You'll need at least one account of type "Investment" with logged buy/sell transactions on it.
Special characters look strange:
This is a text encoding issue. When opening the CSV, make sure your spreadsheet program uses UTF-8 encoding.
Quick Tips
- 🚫 No re-import: HOB can't import an export back in - it's for your records, not a restore
- 🗂️ Export periodically: Download the Complete Data Export every few months for your own records
- 📊 Excel is powerful: Pivot tables, charts, formulas - do analysis HOB doesn't offer, including actual-vs-budget and rollover
- 📁 Organize exports: Create folders by year so you can find old exports easily
- 🔒 Secure your files: These contain sensitive data - treat them carefully
- 📧 Share securely: Use encrypted services when sending to advisors
- 📅 Year-end exports: Archive each year's Complete Data Export on December 31st
Next Steps
Make the most of your financial data:
- Using Reports - Analyze your data within HOB before exporting
- Budget Basics - Use exported data to create better budgets
- Getting Started - Back to the basics
Still have questions? Contact support