“My CSV has columns the importer does not want”
Bank exports are generous: running balance, reference number, category, card ending, branch. Importers are not — several accept a fixed shape and refuse anything else, without saying which column offended them.
Symptoms
The upload is refused on formatting grounds with no specifics The column mapping screen will not let you continue Removing columns at random eventually makes it work
What actually causes it
A fixed layout is required
QuickBooks Online, for instance, accepts three columns (date, description, amount) or four (date, description, credit, debit) and nothing else. A file with a balance column falls outside both no matter how correct it is.
A running balance is mistaken for an amount
Mapping the balance column instead of the amount produces transactions equal to the account total, which is worse than a refusal because it imports silently.
Empty trailing columns
Exports sometimes end each row with a trailing delimiter, creating an extra empty column that the header does not name — enough to fail a strict validator.
How to fix it
- Run the file through the checker below: it reports the real column count and flags rows that do not match the header, including the trailing-delimiter case.
- Delete every column except the ones your importer accepts, keeping date, description and amount at minimum.
- Make sure you keep the amount column and not the balance — they look similar and behave very differently.
- Re-check after editing; spreadsheet edits often introduce the delimiter and encoding problems the checker also catches.
Related import problems
Skip the manual edit — fix it automatically
The checker names the exact rows whose column count differs from the header, which is what makes trailing empty columns findable. Free, no signup, no upload.
Open the fixer