Your Data in Kemback: Exporting Everything, Any Time

Your financial history is yours. It shouldn’t be locked inside any app, including ours. If you’ve ever tried to leave a service and found that the export button gave you only the last 90 days, or a PDF, or nothing at all, you know why this matters.

Kemback lets you download everything in your household at any time, in two open formats, on every plan. This guide shows where to find it, what’s included, how to use each format, and a few good reasons to do it regularly even if you have no plans to leave.

Where to find it

Open Your data from the sidebar. The page is headed with a short promise: “It’s yours. Take a full copy whenever you like, on any plan.”

There’s one card, Download everything, with two buttons:

• Download CSV files (ZIP)
• Download JSON archive

Click either one and the download starts. There’s no waiting for an email, no request form and no limit on how often you do it. Every member of a household can download, whatever their role.

What’s included

Both formats hold the same things: “Accounts, categories, every transaction with its splits and tags, budgets, rules, bills and reconciliations: everything you can see in this household.”

In more detail:

• Accounts: name, type, currency, opening balance, whether it’s shared or private, and when it was created or closed.
• Categories: name, whether it’s income or expense, its parent, whether it’s hidden, and its roll-over setting.
• Transactions: date, payee, memo, amount, status (pending, cleared or reconciled), tags, and every split with its category and amount. The two sides of a transfer share an id that links them.
• Budget: the mode (category or envelope), starting funds, first month, and every monthly amount per category.
• Rules: their order, conditions and actions.
• Bills: payee, amount, account, category, how often and when they start and end.
• Reconciliations: each statement’s date and balance, and how many transactions it covered.

What isn’t included

One thing is left out on purpose: “Another member’s private accounts stay private and aren’t included.” An export holds only what the member who made it could see. If your partner has a private account, it won’t be in your download, and yours won’t be in theirs.

Which format to choose

CSV files (ZIP): for spreadsheets

The ZIP holds one CSV file per kind of record: accounts.csv, categories.csv, transactions.csv, budget_lines.csv, rules.csv, schedules.csv (your bills) and reconciliations.csv, plus a short README.txt.

They open in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. A few details make them easier to work with:

• One row per split. A $150 transaction split into $100 of Groceries and $50 of Household appears as two rows. The transaction’s details repeat on each, followed by the split’s category and amount. Adding up the split amounts gives you exact totals by category.
• Amounts appear twice: as decimal text like -12.34, and as whole cents like -1234. Use whichever suits your spreadsheet.
• Tags are joined with a |, so renovation|kitchen.
• Spreadsheet-safe text. A payee or memo that starts with =, +, - or @ gets a ' in front, so a spreadsheet can’t mistake it for a formula. Amounts and dates are never changed.

JSON archive: for a complete backup or another app

The JSON archive is one file with everything in it. As the page says, it “keeps amounts exactly as stored (whole cents), for moving to another app or keeping a complete backup.”

It’s the better choice if you’re moving to other software, writing your own scripts, or simply want a single file that captures everything precisely. It carries a format version number, so a tool reading it can tell which layout to expect.

If you’re not sure, download both.

Good reasons to export regularly

You don’t need to be leaving to make use of this.

Keep your own backup

Kemback keeps your data safe, but it’s sensible to have a copy you control. A quarterly routine works well: download the JSON archive at the end of March, June, September and December, and save it somewhere you already back up. Name it with the date, like kemback-2026-12-31.json.

Work in a spreadsheet

Some questions are easiest to answer with a pivot table. How much did we spend on the kids each year? What did the kitchen renovation cost across every category? Download the CSV ZIP, open transactions.csv, and filter by tag or category.

Share with an accountant or planner

At tax time, an accountant may want a year’s transactions in a spreadsheet. Export the CSV, filter it to the year, and send just what they need. (If they’ll be looking regularly, you can instead invite them to your household as an Advisor, who can look but not change anything.)

Before a big change in the household

If a household is splitting up, or a member is leaving, each person can download a copy of what they can see beforehand. Private accounts move with their owner automatically, but a copy of the shared history is worth having on both sides.

If you ever decide to leave

We’d rather you stayed, but we’d never make leaving hard. The JSON archive and CSVs are complete and documented, so whatever you move to, you take your full history with you.

Exports are logged

Each export is noted in the household’s activity log, so everyone in a household can see when a copy was taken. You’ll find the log under Activity in the sidebar. It’s tamper-evident, with a badge that shows the history has been verified.

Why it’s free

Some services charge for exports, or make them awkward enough that few people bother. Kemback treats exporting your data, like security and reconciliation, as something that should never be behind a paid plan. Charging for it would amount to holding your data hostage.

The Free plan includes it, and so will Plus when it arrives. Whatever plan you’re on, the Your data page works the same way: two buttons, everything included, any time.

Quick reference

1. Open Your data in the sidebar.
2. Choose Download CSV files (ZIP) for spreadsheets, or Download JSON archive for a complete backup.
3. Save the file somewhere safe, with the date in its name.
4. Repeat every few months, or before any big change.

#data export #privacy #kemback guides

This article is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice. For decisions about your situation, talk to a qualified professional.