Step 1: export from Lunch Money
Export two CSV files from Lunch Money. The transactions export is required. The Net Worth export is optional, but it is what lets Rasa Money match your balances to what Lunch Money shows today and bring over accounts that have no transactions.
The transactions export has one row per transaction with the date, payee, amount, currency, category and category group, notes, tags and account name. The Net Worth export has one row per account with its type, its status and a balance for each month. Upload the files as they come out of Lunch Money; do not edit or re-save them in a spreadsheet first.
Optionally, copy your category list from Lunch Money as text; you paste it in the next step. It lets Rasa Money create every category you have, including ones no transaction uses, and recognise your income categories, which the transactions file does not mark.
A single import takes up to 5 MB and 5,000 transactions. For a longer history, export it in more than one file and import them one after the other. Transactions you already imported are recognised and skipped, so overlapping files are safe.
Step 2: upload and match
Open Transactions → Import, choose Lunch Money, and drop both files in. Rasa Money reads them and shows everything it found on one screen. For each account, category and tag you decide what happens: create it, use one you already have in Rasa Money, or (for accounts) skip it.
Accounts. An account in Rasa Money holds one currency. If a Lunch Money account has transactions in two currencies, you get two accounts, named like Visa Card (CAD) and Visa Card (USD). The type is guessed from the name and the Net Worth file: credit cards, investments and crypto wallets are recognised, and everything else becomes a bank account. Accounts that are closed in Lunch Money and have no transactions start out skipped.
Opening balances. With the Net Worth file, Rasa Money works out an opening balance for each new account so that the opening balance plus the imported transactions equals the balance Lunch Money shows now. What you owe on a credit card stays negative. A Lunch Money account has one balance but may be split over several currencies here, so the balance goes to the currency with the most transactions; you can change any figure before importing. Without the Net Worth file, new accounts start at zero.
Categories. Lunch Money categories can be grouped or standalone. Grouped ones keep their structure, for example Coffee Shops and Groceries inside Food. Rasa Money categories always sit inside a group, so a standalone category such as Shopping becomes a group with a subcategory of the same name. Categories you already have are matched by name and reused. To bring over the whole category tree, paste the list you copied from Lunch Money into the box on the match screen, or press Import categories from clipboard. One category per line works, with subcategories starting with a dash; markers such as [income] are understood, and credit card payment and transfer categories are left out because Rasa Money handles those as transfers.
Tags. Tags are brought over when your plan includes tags (Pro); on Basic they are skipped and the result screen says so. Rasa Money tag names keep only letters and spaces, so a tag such as trip2026 becomes trip, and a transaction carries at most five tags. Anything that had to change is listed on the match screen.
Step 3: review and import
The last screen lists every transaction that will be imported. Untick anything you do not want, then import. The import is all or nothing: if anything fails, the transactions and the accounts and categories created for them are removed again, so you never end up with half a history. Your plan's limits on accounts, categories and currencies are checked up front, so on Basic a large Lunch Money history may need a few cleanups or an upgrade first.
Two kinds of Lunch Money rows are not imported as ordinary transactions. Grouped transactions, the parent rows that hold no amount, are skipped; the transactions inside them are imported on their own. Credit card payments and other movements in Lunch Money's Payment, Transfer category are matched up in pairs and imported as a transfer between your two accounts; a movement whose other half is not in the file is left out and counted in the notice on the review screen.
Transactions that Lunch Money split into several parts arrive as separate transactions, one per part.
Importing the same file twice
Each imported transaction remembers its Lunch Money ID. If you upload the same export again, or a newer one that overlaps, the transactions you already have are recognised, listed as already imported and left out. The wizard is safe to re-run after you add more history in Lunch Money.
What does not come across
The exports do not contain these, so you set them up again in Rasa Money: budgets, rules, bank connections (Rasa Money has no bank sync), shared access, and the monthly net worth history. Recurring items in Lunch Money arrive as ordinary transactions; set up your recurring payments in Rasa Money afterwards.
Account types Rasa Money does not have, such as loans, property and vehicles, cannot be created. They are named on the match screen so you can add what matters to you by hand.
After the import
Check that each account balance looks right, set your budgets, add your recurring payments, and look through the categories that were created. Imported tags can scope a budget too, for example one budget for everything tagged with a trip. Debts and settlements are set up from scratch in Rasa Money. If a file would not load or the import stopped, see What to do if an import doesn't go through.