How it works

Five steps from scattered charges to real answers — all on your device.

1. Upload

Drop in up to 12 statement files — .csv, .xlsx or .xls — exported from your bank, card issuer or accounting software. You can also re-open a sheet you previously exported from the app as JSON.

The upload screen: a checkbox agreeing to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, above a drop area reading — Nothing can be uploaded until the Terms and Privacy Policy are agreed to — one checkbox, once, on the screen you are already on rather than a link buried in a footer. Until it is ticked the drop area stays inert and says so.

2. Combine, or keep them separate

With more than one file, you choose how they're combined: merge them into a single sheet sorted by date, or keep one sheet per file and switch between them later. Merging suits files that cover the same period — e.g. a checking account and a credit card for the same month.

The combine step with two files selected, offering two choices: combine into one sheet, or keep files separate. — The warning here is the part worth reading. A credit card bill paid from your checking account is one expense on that statement, and the purchases behind it appear all over again on the card’s own — so combining two different accounts can count the same spending twice. Upload one account at a time, with all of its files together.

3. Map the columns

Banks disagree about what a statement looks like. The app reads your file, guesses which row holds the headers and which columns hold the date, description and amount — or separate debit and credit columns — and shows you a live preview with the mapped columns coloured. Correct anything it got wrong before continuing; it won't let you proceed while a file reads no transactions at all.

The column mapping screen: the app has detected the header row and matched the date, description, amount and balance columns, beside a live preview of the file showing 50 transactions found. — Most bank exports open with a few lines of account preamble before the real header row, and this sample is no exception — CostSorter found the header on row 4, worked out which column was which, and read all 50 transactions. The preview is your actual file, so a wrong guess is visible immediately rather than three steps later.

4. Categorize

This is where the work is, so the app does as much of it as it can. Transactions with the same wording are offered as a group you can categorize in one go. Categories are filled in from the merchant name when the app recognizes it. Anything it doesn't recognise is left for you.

A filled-in category is a suggestion rather than a decision — change it, clear it, or leave it. Anything you categorize yourself teaches the rest of that sheet: label one coffee shop and the others are suggested, never applied without you. You can group transactions by hand, name a group, add tags, and take individual transactions back out of a group.

The categorize step: six Starbucks transactions grouped into a single row categorized as Coffee Shops, with similar grouped rows for Trader Joe’s and Chevron. — Transactions worded the same are offered as one group you categorize once — six coffees become a single row. Categories are filled in from the merchant name wherever CostSorter recognises it, which here covers 48 of the 50 transactions. The two it leaves blank are a Venmo payment and a Zelle transfer, and that is deliberate: a peer-to-peer payment is rent, or dinner, or a secondhand sofa, and no keyword is right often enough to be worth guessing with.

5. Read the report

Income, spending, net and savings rate; a donut or bar breakdown by category whose legend highlights the matching transactions; what you kept over time, with both lines adding up from the start of the period; your top five expenses by category, sub-category or tag; and a budget view that starts from what your income works out to per hour.

Filter the whole report by tag, or switch a category off to see the rest without it. Then save the sheet to this browser — optionally locked with a password — or export it as CSV or JSON, or print it as a PDF.

The budget view measures your housing, your car and what you keep against three published benchmarks. If you want to know where the 30%, 10% and 15% come from, or whether they are worked out on your pre-tax or post-tax income, both are answered in the FAQ.

The report: income of $5,641, expenses of $4,837, net of $804 and a savings rate of 14 percent, above a donut chart breaking spending down by category and a top five expenses panel. — Totals first, then where the money actually went. Switching a category off or filtering by tag narrows every figure below it, and the whole report prints to PDF.

The budget panel: housing costs at 32 percent of monthly income shown in red, car costs at 9 percent in blue, and savings at 14 percent in red, with a figure of 33.9 hours per week below. — The budget view measures housing, the car and what you keep against three published benchmarks — 30%, 10% and 15% — and turns the answer into hours worked. Green is inside the guideline, blue is close to it, red is past it. This sample month is over on housing and a little short on saving. Where those three numbers come from is answered in the FAQ.

What it doesn't do

It doesn't connect to your bank. There is no login to your financial institution, no account aggregation, and nothing to authorise — you bring the file yourself. It also isn't advice: it's arithmetic on the data you give it, plus automated guesses about what each transaction was. Check the figures against your own statements before relying on them.

Go to app