Switching from Rocket Money

Four things, in this order. The first is about money rather than data.

1. Stop any automatic savings. Rocket Money’s Financial Goals move money out of your checking account on their own. Turn them off and move what they hold back to your bank before you cancel.
2. Check you are on Premium. The transaction export is a Premium feature. If you are on the free plan, your bank’s own CSV is the source instead (see below).
3. Write down your budgets. Budget amounts live only inside Rocket Money. A screenshot of each one is enough.
4. Start your Cadence Money trial. Every plan includes a 14-day trial and a card is required to start it. You do not need to connect a bank to import a file.

Open Transactions, in the app or on the website, and choose the export option. Rocket Money emails you a link to the CSV rather than downloading it straight away, and the file opens on a computer, not a phone. Take the widest date range on offer - history is the one part of this move that is hard to recreate later.

On the free plan there is no export, so your bank’s own record is the source. It is the original, and it usually reaches further back.

• Pick CSV if you are offered a choice. PDF, Excel and OFX files are not read by the import wizard.
• One file per account, and download credit cards separately: cards print charges and payments the opposite way round from a chequing export.

The wizard is six steps and tells you which one you are on at the top - Step 1 of 6 through Step 6 of 6. Nothing is written to your account until the last one, so backing out part-way through is safe.

1. Upload. Open the + menu, choose Import Transactions, pick Budget App for a Rocket Money file, then drop it in.
2. Account. Say which account these transactions belong to. The dropdown lists the accounts you keep by hand, plus Create a new account at the top.
3. Mapping. Cadence Money suggests a column for each field from the header names. Check the date, the merchant name and the amount, and point the category at Rocket Money’s category column if you want it.
4. Review. Check the parsed dates, amounts and merchant names. You can correct a category here, and each correction teaches Cadence Money for next time.
5. Duplicates. The file is compared against what the account already holds, before anything is written.
6. Confirm. A summary of what is about to land, and the button that writes it.

• Dates, merchant names and amounts, once the mapping is confirmed.
• Rocket Money’s categories, if you map that column. Cadence Money categorises everything anyway, so a file without them costs you nothing.
• Anything else you point at on the mapping step, such as notes. Unmapped columns are ignored.
• Your history in full, as far back as your files go.

• Your budgets. These are settings rather than data, and no export carries them.
• Financial Goals and their balances. Set your goals up again in Cadence Money, which tracks them without moving money.
• Your transaction rules. Rebuild the ones you rely on as Transaction Rules.
• Historical account balances. You set a balance once per account and Cadence Money carries it forward from there.
• Your Rocket Money subscription. Cancel it with Rocket Money - starting with Cadence Money does not end it.

1. Create your budgets. Tap the + button and choose Budget, name it, pick Monthly or Annual, set the amount, and link the spending categories that feed it.
2. Review your bills. Cadence Money spots recurring charges in your history and suggests them as bills, which is where your subscriptions show up. Cancelling one is still done with the company that charges you.
3. Check the import. Settings → Imports lists every file you have brought in. From there you can move one to a different account, or undo it entirely.
4. Decide how future months arrive. Keep importing a CSV when it suits you, or connect the bank on the Cadence+ and Premium plans and let new transactions arrive on their own - in Canada as well as the USA.