File format for bank upload CSV

In certain circumstances you may wish to manually generate a CSV file of bank transaction for uploading into your FreeAgent account.

FreeAgent supports multiple CSV formats including support for banks that only allow downloads as a CSV.

How to format your CSV file

To create a basic CSV to upload to FreeAgent you need to include minimum of three fields:
Date, Amount, and Description.

• Column A - Date
  - Use the date format dd/mm/yyyy
• Column B - Amount (cells should be formatted as Number to 2 decimal places)
  - Transactions for money paid out of the bank account should have minus signs in front of them (-) and transactions for money coming into the bank account in should not have minus signs in front of them
• Column C - Description

Checklist

• Make sure you haven’t included a header row
• Make sure your date format is dd/mm/yyyy
• Make sure you have used a single amounts column to contain both money paid out and money paid in
• Make sure there are no commas in your amounts columns
• Make sure you haven't included any quote marks (")
• Make sure each description is on a single line with no carriage returns
• Make sure the file format is .csv (not .xls or .xlsx)
• Make sure a character delimiter of comma ',' is being used when you export your CSV file.

Regional settings

FreeAgent only supports CSV files with a character delimiter of comma ','.

If you're outside the UK, you may find that your computer uses a semi-colon ';' as opposed to a comma ',' to separate values.  Don't worry though, this can be altered with a small tweak to your device's regional settings.

Windows users

To change your system settings in Windows, go to your Control Panel and select 'Regional and Language Options' (or 'Date, Time and Regional Options' then 'Regional and Language Option'). Select the 'Customise' button to see an option for 'List separator' where you can change the semi-colon to a comma.

Mac users

Here's what you need to do:

Go to System Preferences -> Language & Text -> Click the 'Formats' Tab and then click the 'Customize' button in the 'Numbers' section of the page.  You'll need to change 'Number Separator' for 'Decimal' to a comma and to a 'Space' for 'Thousands'.

Click OK to save your changes and restart your Mac for the changes to take effect.