How to Import Bank Transactions to Split Expenses Automatically

You had dinner with friends last Tuesday. And a group Uber on Wednesday. And somebody bought groceries for the house on Thursday. By Friday, you've forgotten half of it. The dinner was... $78? Or was it $87? You could scroll through your bank app to find the exact number, but then you still have to open your expense splitting app, type in the amount, type in the description, pick the group, pick the split method. Multiply that by four or five transactions and you're looking at several minutes of tedious data entry for stuff your bank already knows about.

Most people don't bother. They let the small ones slide, round the big ones to the nearest ten, and quietly absorb the difference. Over a few months of splitting rent, groceries, and dinners with the same group, those approximations add up to real money.

Your Bank Already Has the Data

Every shared expense you pay for already shows up in your bank account with the amount, the date, and the merchant name. The information is sitting right there. The problem is getting it from your bank into your expense splitting app without retyping everything.

That's what bank import does. It connects directly to your bank account, pulls in your transactions, and lets you turn any of them into split-ready expenses with a couple of taps. No manual entry. No guessing what you spent at that restaurant three days ago. No forgetting the $14 Uber pool that seemed too small to bother logging at the time.

SplitterUp supports over 7,000 US banks through Teller, so whether you use Chase, Bank of America, a local credit union, or something in between, chances are your bank is covered.

The Cryptic Description Problem

Anyone who's looked at their bank statement knows the descriptions are borderline unreadable. You went to Thai Orchid for dinner, but your bank shows "POS DEBIT 4829 THAI ORCHID #127 AUSTIN TX." You got coffee at Blue Bottle, but the statement reads "BLUE BOTTLE COFFE SQ *8291."

If you're manually entering expenses, you'd clean that up yourself. With bank import, SplitterUp does it automatically. It strips out the POS codes, transaction IDs, and random numbers, leaving you with a clean merchant name. "Thai Orchid." "Blue Bottle Coffee." That's what shows up when you import the transaction, and that's what your group members see.

It's a small thing, but it makes the difference between an expense list that looks like a database dump and one that actually makes sense when your roommates review it.

How It Works: Three Steps

The whole process takes about 30 seconds once your bank is connected.

Step 1: Connect your bank. Open SplitterUp, go to Bank Import, and tap "Connect Bank." Teller's secure connection walks you through logging into your bank — the same way you'd log in on your bank's own app. SplitterUp never sees your username or password. Teller handles the authentication directly with your bank, and SplitterUp gets read-only access to your transaction history. That's it. No ability to move money, make payments, or do anything other than view transactions.

Step 2: Select transactions. Once connected, you see a list of your recent transactions with clean descriptions and amounts. You can scroll through, search by name (useful when you're looking for a specific restaurant), and tap to select the ones that were shared expenses. Going through a whole week of transactions and picking out the four or five shared ones takes a few seconds.

Step 3: Import and split. Each selected transaction becomes a pre-filled expense — the amount, date, and description are already there. You just pick which group to add it to, choose your split method (equal, custom, percentage, whatever fits), and confirm. If you selected multiple transactions, SplitterUp walks you through them one by one so you can assign each to the right group. Skip any you change your mind about. The whole batch takes under a minute.

Security and Privacy

Connecting your bank account to any app is a reasonable thing to be cautious about. Here's the short version of how SplitterUp handles it:

• Read-only access. SplitterUp can view your transactions. It cannot move money, make payments, or modify your account in any way. Period.
• Your credentials never touch SplitterUp. When you connect your bank, you're logging in through Teller's encrypted connection directly to your bank. SplitterUp doesn't see, store, or have access to your banking username or password.
• Disconnect means delete. If you disconnect a bank account, all transaction data imported from that account is permanently deleted. Not archived. Not retained for analytics. Gone.
• Delete your SplitterUp account and everything goes with it. All your data — including anything imported from your bank — is permanently erased.

Bank Import is an optional add-on at $0.99/month or $9.99/year. You can cancel anytime, and any expenses you've already imported and split stay in your groups — you just can't import new ones until you resubscribe.

Bank Import vs. Receipt Scanning

SplitterUp also has receipt scanning that uses AI to read line items from a photo of a receipt. So which should you use?

They solve different problems, and the best answer is usually both.

Bank import is best for catching up. It's Friday and you need to log the week's shared expenses. Or it's the end of the month and you want to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks for rent and household costs. Pull up your transactions, select the shared ones, import them in batch. Done in two minutes. Bank import shines when you're working from memory and your bank statement is more reliable than your recall.

Receipt scanning is best in the moment. You're at a restaurant, the bill arrives, and three people ordered very different things. Scan the receipt, assign items to people, and everyone pays for exactly what they ordered — including proportional tax and tip. Receipt scanning handles item-level detail that bank import can't, because your bank just sees one charge for the whole table.

The combination covers everything. Receipt scanning when you're there and want item-level fairness. Bank import when you're catching up on everything else — the Ubers, the grocery runs, the bar tab from Saturday, the gas fill-up on the road trip. Between the two, nothing gets forgotten and nothing needs to be typed in by hand.

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Manual expense entry is the reason most people give up on splitting after a few weeks. It's too much friction for too little payoff. Bank import removes that friction entirely. Your transactions are already there. All you have to do is pick the shared ones and split them.

For more on how SplitterUp handles expense splitting, check out the full feature list or the dedicated Bank Import page with screenshots and pricing details.