How to Switch from Mint to Kemback

Mint closed in March 2024. If you used it for years, you may still have the one thing it let you take with you: a download of every transaction, usually a file called transactions.csv. That file is a complete record of your spending history, and it deserves better than sitting in a Downloads folder.

Kemback’s Switch from Mint wizard reads that export and turns it back into accounts you can use: every account Mint knew about, each transaction with its category, labels and notes, and card payments and transfers linked so they don’t count as spending. This guide walks through it.

Step 1: Find your Mint export

Mint can’t make new exports now that it has closed, so you’ll need the one you saved (there’s more on finding an old Mint export if you’re stuck). Look in:

Your Downloads folder, for transactions.csv (or transactions (1).csv if you downloaded it more than once).
Your email, if you sent it to yourself.
Cloud storage such as Google Drive, iCloud Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox.

Open it in a spreadsheet before you start if you’re not sure it’s the right file. A Mint export has columns like Date, Description, Original Description, Amount, Transaction Type, Category, Account Name, Labels and Notes. One file holds every account.

If you never downloaded one, Kemback can still help you start fresh: add your accounts by hand and import recent files from your banks instead.

Step 2: Open the wizard

Sign in at kemback.com and open Accounts. On an empty household you’ll see a box headed “Coming from Mint?” with a Switch from Mint link. Follow it.

The wizard opens with the heading Switch from Mint: “Bring your Mint history across: every account, transaction, category and label, with transfers linked.”

You need to be an owner or editor of the household to import. A viewer sees a note asking an owner or editor to do it.

Step 3: Choose the file

Under Choose the file, pick your Mint CSV. Kemback reads it immediately. Nothing is saved until the last step.

If the file isn’t a Mint export, for example a CSV straight from your bank, you’ll see “This doesn’t look like a Mint export. Use the Import page for other CSV files.” The regular Import page handles bank CSVs, with a step to match the columns.

Step 4: Check what’s coming across

The card headed Check what’s coming across lists every account in the file, with three columns:

In Mint: the account name as Mint had it, often something like “CREDIT CARD” or “Checking …1234”.
Transactions: how many transactions the file holds for it.
In Kemback: where it will go.

For each account, use Import into to choose A new account, an existing Kemback account, or Leave it out. For a new account you can set:

Name: a good time to replace “CREDIT CARD” with “Chase Visa” or “Amex”.
Kind: Checking, Savings, Cash, Investment, Other asset, Credit card, Loan or Other liability.
Balance today: see below.

Why Kemback asks for “Balance today”

Mint’s export has no balances in it, only transactions. Without a starting point, an imported checking account would show the sum of every transaction since you joined Mint, which is rarely your real balance.

So for each new account, enter its balance today, from your bank’s website or app. Kemback sets the account’s opening balance so that, after every transaction is counted, the account ends exactly where your bank says it is.

A worked example: your checking account’s transactions in the file add up to +$1,180.00, and your bank says the balance today is $2,340.15. Type 2,340.15 and Kemback sets an opening balance of $1,160.15, so the register ends at $2,340.15.

A few rules for this field:

A card you owe money on is negative. If you owe $612.40 on a credit card, type -612.40.
Leave it blank if you don’t know. The account starts from zero, and you can reconcile it against a statement later to set it right.
Old accounts you’ve closed can stay blank, or you can choose Leave it out.

If you type something that isn’t an amount, the wizard says “A balance today isn’t an amount, like 1,234.56 or -250.” and waits for a fix.

Transactions already in an account you import into are recognized and left out, so running the wizard twice is safe. A red already here badge shows how many.

Step 5: Bring it across

The Import card explains that everything arrives already reviewed, so years of history won’t fill your review inbox, and that you can undo the whole import from the Import page.

Choose Bring it across.

Step 6: See what arrived

The page changes to You’ve switched, with a summary like “9,870 transactions in 6 accounts came across from transactions.csv.” Each account is listed with how many transactions it received, and a line below says how many transfers were linked and how many categories were added.

Here’s what happened to the parts of your Mint data:

In Mint	In Kemback
Each account name	A separate account
Category	A category (new ones are created as needed)
Labels	Tags
Notes	The transaction’s memo
A card payment from checking	A linked transfer between the two accounts

The linked transfers matter. In the raw export, a $1,200 credit card payment appears twice: once leaving checking and once arriving on the card. Left unlinked, it could look like $1,200 of spending and $1,200 of income. In Kemback, the two sides are linked as one transfer, so your reports and budget count the purchases on the card, not the payment as well.

If something looks wrong, open Accounts → Import a file, find the file under Past imports, and choose Undo. Its transactions, and any empty accounts it created, are removed.

Step 7: Pick up where Mint left off

Your history now ends on the day you downloaded the export, which may have been a while ago. To bring each account up to date:

Download recent transactions from each bank’s website, as OFX, QFX, QIF or CSV. How far back you can go varies by bank.
In Kemback, open Accounts → Import a file and choose the file.
Set Import into to the matching account.

Overlapping dates are fine. Transactions already there are marked already imported, and likely duplicates are flagged so you can decide. Automatic bank sync is coming with the Plus plan; on the free plan, importing files is how new transactions arrive.

If there’s a gap between your Mint export and the oldest date your bank will give you, reconcile the account against a recent statement. That brings the balance back in line even if a few months of detail are missing.

Step 8: Build a budget from your history

This is where years of Mint data pay off. The Next card on the results page links to Build a budget from this history. Kemback looks at what you spent in each category over the last three full months, averages it, rounds up, and suggests that as the budget. Untick what you don’t want, adjust the rest, and choose Add to budget.

If your Mint history is old, the suggestions will be thin until recent months are imported. Import first, then build the budget.

From there:

Bills: the Looks recurring card finds subscriptions and regular payments in your history and shows what each costs a year.
Rules: Mint categorized automatically, and Kemback can too. Each time you change a transaction’s category, Kemback offers a rule for that payee.
Reports: net worth over time, and spending by category, payee or tag (your old Mint labels included).

A note on what’s different

Mint was free and supported by advertising and product offers (see how Kemback compares as a Mint alternative). Kemback’s free plan is a complete product without ads, and Kemback doesn’t sell your data. It also never stores your bank password. And if you ever want to leave, Your data downloads everything as CSV or JSON, which is the kind of exit Mint’s users wished they’d had more notice of.

#switching from mint #kemback guides

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