Track your bills without handing over your bank login

Why bank links break

Most budget apps do not talk to your bank themselves. They pay a data company to do it, and that company signs in on your behalf or holds a permission your bank issued. When anything in that chain changes, the link stops and you are asked to sign in again. The data companies’ own documentation lists the usual causes:

• You changed your bank password.
• Your two-step sign-in settings changed, or the session behind them expired.
• Your bank moved to a newer way of granting access.
• The permission you gave expired, or was revoked.

None of these is anyone’s mistake. It is how linked accounts work, and the fix is always the same: sign in again. With a statement import, nothing is linked, so there is nothing to reconnect.

What you give up without a link

• Automatic daily updates. A linked account refreshes on its own. An import happens when you do it. If you skip a month, the view is a month old.
• Pending charges. Bank exports usually list posted transactions only, so you will not see a charge the day you make it.
• A budgeting method. UNDR CTRL is not an envelope or zero-based budget. It tells you which bills are due, from which account, and what that leaves, and stops there.

What you keep

• Your bills, found for you. The charges that repeat every month or every year are in the export, and that is what most people link a bank for.
• Every account in one list. Import a checking statement and a card statement, name each account, and every bill says where it is paid from.
• What is due next. Upcoming spend, recurring and variable bills, and cash runway by account.
• No login in anyone’s hands. There is no field for a bank username or password anywhere in UNDR CTRL.
• Your data in a file you can read. The CSV you import is one you can open in any spreadsheet.

The import, step by step

Almost every US bank and card has an export button on its transactions page. The labels differ (Download, Export, Statements and documents), and the file is a CSV with a date, a description and an amount.

1. Download the CSV. On your bank’s transactions page, choose a date range and the CSV format. The last 90 days is a good start: it holds three months of each monthly bill.
2. Drop it into UNDR CTRL. On the Bills page, choose Import CSV and pick the file. UNDR CTRL finds the header row on its own, reading a single amount column or separate debit and credit columns, and dates in the common US and ISO forms.
3. Check the preview. Before anything is saved you see how many transactions it read, the date range, how many are money in and money out, and the first few rows. Card payments and transfers between your own accounts are skipped. Pick which account the statement belongs to, tap Flip if in and out look swapped, then Import.
4. Review the bills it found. Rows already in your workspace are not added twice, and the import can be undone. On your first import, the bills it finds are added to your Bills list for you; delete any that are not bills. After that, new ones are offered under Bills found in your transactions, each with Add or Not a bill.

A typical export looks like this:

Date,Description,Amount,Balance
09/02/2026,ELECTRIC CO AUTOPAY,-96.40,2104.18
09/05/2026,PAYROLL DEPOSIT,1850.00,3954.18
09/08/2026,INTERNET SERVICE,-70.00,3884.18
09/15/2026,AUTO LOAN PMT,-312.55,3571.63
09/22/2026,GROCERY MART,-84.12,3487.51

How UNDR CTRL spots a bill

It groups charges by payee, with reference numbers and words like AUTOPAY and PMT stripped out, and calls a payee a bill when:

• it was charged at least twice, in at least two different months;
• the usual gap is about a month (25 to 35 days) or about a year;
• the amounts are close to each other, or the payee is clearly a bill, such as a utility, insurance, rent, a loan, a phone or internet plan, or a subscription.

Charges under $2 are left out, and when your file has a category column, so are dining, groceries, gas and transfers. A payee not seen for about six weeks (a year and a month for yearly bills) is treated as ended. The next due date comes from the last charge. Pay that lands about every two weeks is offered as a paycheck. You can rename any bill, change its amount or day, or add one by typing a line such as bill Water $60 monthly on the 24th.

What is never collected

• No bank username, password or access token. UNDR CTRL never stores bank passwords; bank data comes in only as files you export yourself.
• No data company between you and your bank.
• No selling of your data and no ads.
• Your workspace is stored with a hosted database provider in the United States. The Privacy Policy and the Information Security Program have the detail.

Moving from a bank-linked app

1. Download the last 90 days from each bank and card you pay bills from.
2. Import each statement into UNDR CTRL and pick its account.
3. Check the bills it found, and type in any bill that has not shown up in a statement yet, like a yearly fee.
4. Subscribe to the calendar feed so every due date shows in the calendar you already use.
5. Import again each payday. That is the one habit this way of working asks of you.

Questions

Does UNDR CTRL connect to my bank at all?

No, on purpose. You export a statement from your bank’s website and drop it in.

Can I import a credit card statement?

Yes. Any CSV with a date and an amount works, from checking, savings or a card. Pick the account when you import so each bill says where it is paid from.

What if my bank only gives me a PDF?

Most banks offer CSV on the transactions page even when monthly statements are PDF only. If yours does not, add bills by typing a line, or use Scan screenshot on the Bills page. Screenshot reading uses AI, every result is labeled, and it can be wrong, so check it before you act on it.