Wave accounting integration

I am using a wonderful product called Wave Accounting.

It actually offers connecting your (legacy) bank accounts to it for automatic importing of transactions, however it cannot currently connect to a Monzo account (I have never used this anyway as I’m way too sceptical of the security of it).

Manually importing from Monzo into Wave has been particularly cumbersome, as I cannot export from Monzo to CSV, and even if I do I need to get the CSV off my phone and onto my PC before I can upload it.

However, they have an API, and Monzo has an API too, so it should be possible to create some form of integration between the two (I know they have etsy and paypal integrations, for example).

I would love it, if some sort of connection between the two could be enabled.

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Doesn’t this do it?

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Yes on iOS but not yet on Android…

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Ha, when I first saw this screenshot I thought “How blind am I?” But, yes, I’m on android.

It’s a real shame this isn’t possible, as its the main reason that I’m basically using Monzo for foreign cash withdrawals only. Manually transcribing transaction from my phone screen to the accounting software is just too error prone and time consuming. If a direct integration was ever possible, then Monzo would immediately become my main card to use …

Once the open API is ready, Wave will be able to build the integration themselves, for users like you :smiley:

I have been manually typing my Monzo transactions into Wave for the last few months as the CSV export file is not strictly a “statement” file. In common with many other financial management and reporting apps, Wave needs a date, a description and an amount. Unlike other packages Wave semi-automates this and asks you to pick a field if there are, say, two numeric fields in the CSV. That generally works with most of the challenger banks CSVs but Monzo’s CSV is a nightmare!

Wave fails before the first hurdle as it looks at the Monzo file and says “Date field not found”. When I looked at the CSV in Excel it was absolutely right. No date field at all, but the date is encapsulated in a concatenated splurge of date and time characters. Who has any use for all this un-necessary bloat that is in the Monzo CSV?

I know they are now working on statement production (I have already been asked to show a bank statement to a broker and I’ve only switched to Monzo a few months ago). A statement of transactions is so fundamental to operating a bank account that I cannot imagine why it isn’t there. The sensible thing to do from there is offer a statement only CSV as an option with just three fields:

Date (type date)
Description - usually payee / merchant info (type character)
Amount - positive or negative (type numeric)

Or just give an option for OFX - works perfectly every time. (Wave and Monzo APIs may well talk later but we need something now).

That’s all that’s needed for accounting. For those who want to assign categories in the banking app, they probably will do everything in the app whereas people like me want to assign categories across a range of banking products but do it all in one place. Even if I wanted to be 100% faithful to Monzo, they don’t do limited company or business accounts (I have need for both) and they don’t do joint accounts (my wife and I spend some of our money jointly). Then there’s savings. Perhaps they will come to Monzo but I will still pick the account provider offering the highest rate.

I’ve now dumped all the dinosaur banks. I’m just waiting for the challengers to catch up with a few basic concepts.

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Hi there @nanos, @Dunsford, @alexs, @briansmart and anyone else stumbling upon this topic,

I am also a keen Wave user and would love to see an integration between Wave and Monzo (especially since I’m a Monzo Business user and need to update my Wave accounts regularly). However, I believe an integration is still a way away as Wave doesn’t yet support Open Banking API. So until they do, we’re probably going to rely on the manual CSV export/import solution – which isn’t actually that bad in my opinion.

HOWEVER! It would make life a whole lot easier if the date format didn’t need to be fixed before the CSV file can be imported into Wave! [echoing your point @briansmart]

I hope you agree and that you’ll support the idea of having this improved by Monzo. I found another thread about this problem and thought I would let you know, so that – if you want to – you can add your support/vote to that thread in order to combine our efforts and push for a solution.

Here it is:

Hope that’s useful. Cheers!

I think you mean who in earth is working on Wave who doesn’t think to parse international standards correctly.

I’m personally glad they use a useful format rather tha than inventing their own one that will have to be manually parsed by any software written to interact with it tether than use proven and optimised libraries.

Anyone who’s ever even dipped into programming is aware how much of a fubar datetimes can be if not implemented by someone who knows what they are doing (i.e. a library author).

Trying to produce a custom regex to parse ankther format is a recipe for disaster.

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Interesting that something I posted two and a half years ago has just been resurrected. I had moved on within 12 months of writing that.

Firstly Monzo weren’t moving forward with anything much at all and Starling galloped ahead in leaps and bounds so I moved my personal and company accounts to them, then our joint account and my sole trader business. I believe Monzo now offer all of these but they were too late at the finishing line for me.

Secondly Wave weren’t even considering Europe’s PSD2 regulations and later effectively withdrew from Europe by saying they wouldn’t support Open Banking at all. My wife still uses them for her book-keeping but doesn’t put her business through a bank.

I tried 3 different accounts solutions (none of which understood the Monzo CSV) and finally found Quickfile that integrated every credit card and bank account I had and were just finishing off work on direct connection with the Starling API. After years of trying to get a perfect integrated banking and accounting solution I finally had it! I have never looked back since and have just finished my second year with Quickfile.

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UPDATE: