“The download worked last month and fails now”
When a routine that worked for years fails and nothing changed on your side, something changed on theirs. Website upgrades quietly alter export formats, and the resulting file is usually valid — just different.
Symptoms
The same monthly routine now produces a rejected file Column order or names changed in a CSV export An OFX download now arrives with a different extension or structure Other customers of the same bank report it at the same time
What actually causes it
New export code with different conventions
Rebuilt banking platforms tend to change delimiters, date formats and column names. Each change is small; together they break every downstream tool.
A regression in the new exporter
Fresh export code reintroduces old bugs: unescaped ampersands, missing headers, duplicated transaction ids. These are genuine defects on the bank's side and worth reporting.
Identifiers changed after a merger
Bank and account identifiers change when institutions merge, so files that are otherwise identical are treated as belonging to a different account.
How to fix it
- Drop both the old working file and the new failing one into the fixer below and compare what it reports — the difference is usually immediately visible.
- If the new file has structural defects, repair it here and report the problem to the bank; regressions get fixed when customers describe them precisely.
- If the new file is merely different, update your import mapping rather than the file.
- Keep one known-good file from each bank. Having a baseline turns "something broke" into a five-minute comparison.
Related import problems
Skip the manual edit — fix it automatically
Running the old and new file through the same checks turns a vague "it stopped working" into a specific list of what changed. Free, no signup, no upload.
Open the fixer