In August 2012 we built an importer for Billmonk data as that service started to have problems. It helped a lot of their users seamlessly switch their expense histories and balances over to Splitwise, sparing them hours of re-entry and even worse, the horror of losing it all. We loved helping die-hard sharers find a new home, and it was a blast getting to know the Billmonk-turned-Splitwise community through the whopping 79 comments they left on our importer blog post.
We’re happy to now release an importer for Buxfer data, which we’ve developed in response to some observations about the service: The founding team appears to have moved on to Facebook, and there have been rather lengthy outages over the last year or so, with very spotty support throughout. It doesn’t seem that the site is going to close down anytime soon, but we wanted to give Buxfer users an easy way to turn over a new leaf if they felt so inclined.
If you’re a current Buxfer user and would like to get started with Splitwise, go import your Buxfer data! Or, keeping reading about the tool and co-founder Marshall’s development process below. The import process is reversible – there’s a link on the bottom of the import page that will remove all imported expenses, though invites that get sent as a result of the import will likely still go out.
The importer is not a completely smooth process yet. There were some details that I was unable to test well and need some user assistance to check. I do not attempt to import groups yet. We’ll import the bills, but not sort them into groups or add groups to Splitwise. I need a user with a lot of data and a couple of groups to get in touch with me to work the kinks out of that process; if that sounds like you, please contact me at support@splitwise.com.
I’m also unable to import recurring expenses and multi-payer properly. Recurring expenses will be imported, but it will no longer be recurring. You will need to manually edit the most recent copy of the recurring expense and add the recurring details.
Multi-payer expense are sometimes imported with different amounts for how much each person paid or owes, but the overall balance change is the same. For example:
Buxfer expense:
Lisa paid $20 and owes $15 (in total gets back $5)
Jon paid $10 and owes $15 (in total owes $5)
Splitwise expense:
Lisa paid $5 (in total gets back $5)
Jon owes $5 (in total owes $5)
Overall, the changes in balances are correct, but the information to get the paid and owed shares exactly the same is missing from the Buxfer exports.
There may be some other issues, so please send us an email at support@splitwise.com if you have any trouble importing your Buxfer data! We look forward to working with you and supporting you throughout the whole process. Welcome to Splitwise!
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