Guide

How to categorize a bank statement for free

MuntLab · 7 min read

Export a statement from ABN AMRO, ING or Rabobank and you get exactly three columns that matter: a date, a description, and an amount. No categories. Your bank knows you paid Albert Heijn €47.30 on a Tuesday — it has no idea that's "Food," and it definitely doesn't know your fixed costs from your discretionary spending.

That's the actual gap between "I can see my transactions" and "I understand where my money goes." Here's what automatic categorization does to close it, what it can't do, and how to try it on your own statement for free.

The manual way, and why almost nobody finishes it

You can do this in Excel — export the CSV, add a category column, and go row by row. For one month of transactions that's maybe 80-150 rows. It's not hard. It's just tedious enough that most people do it once, get a useful answer, and then never repeat it the following month. A tool that requires willpower every 30 days isn't really a habit — it's a one-time audit that happens to feel like it should be recurring.

What automatic categorization actually does

A rule-based categorization engine reads each transaction's description and matches it against known merchant patterns — "albert heijn" or "ah to go" → Food, "netflix" or "spotify" → Subscriptions, "ns groep" or "ns-zakelijk" → Transport, and so on across hundreds of common Dutch and international merchants. It's not AI guessing — it's a deterministic lookup, which means the same transaction description always lands in the same category, every time.

It isn't perfect. Anything the engine doesn't recognize — a new merchant, an unusual description, a person's name from a bank transfer — falls into an "Other" catch-all rather than a wrong guess. In the full MuntLab app you can create a custom rule once ("Jan de Vries → Rent") and it applies automatically to every future statement. A one-off free tool obviously can't remember rules between sessions, since it never stores anything about you at all.

The categories you'll actually see

Ten categories cover the vast majority of a typical Dutch household's spending:

Income and internal transfers between your own accounts are detected and excluded from spending totals automatically — otherwise moving €500 to a savings account would show up as "spending" and quietly inflate every number above it.

Do it in under a minute, on your own statement

  1. Export a CSV, Excel or PDF statement from your bank — if you haven't done this before, here's exactly where the download button is for ABN AMRO, ING, Rabobank and five others.
  2. Drop the file into MuntSnap, MuntLab's free analyzer — no account, no email required to see the result.
  3. See your categorized breakdown instantly: savings rate, subscriptions total, average monthly spend, and a chart of where the rest went.

Try it on your own statement — free, no signup

MuntSnap runs entirely in your browser. Your file is never uploaded, stored, or logged — you could disconnect your internet after the page loads and it would still work.

Categorize my statement free →

A one-time snapshot vs. an ongoing picture

MuntSnap answers "what did last month actually look like" — a single file, a single answer, nothing saved. It won't tell you if this month was unusual for you, or catch a subscription that quietly crept up from €9.99 to €14.99. That takes the same categorization applied consistently every month, which is what the full MuntLab app does — plus budgets, cash flow forecasting, and a straight answer on whether your current habits actually get you to retirement.

Frequently asked

How accurate is automatic categorization?

It gets most transactions right on the first pass by matching common Dutch and international merchant names. Anything it doesn't recognize lands in "Other" rather than a wrong guess — and in the full app, you can correct any category once and it's remembered for every future statement.

Is my bank statement uploaded anywhere?

No. Categorization happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. The file is never sent to a server, stored, or logged.

Does it only work with ABN AMRO, ING and Rabobank?

Those three plus bunq, SNS and ASN are supported out of the box, in CSV, PDF and Excel formats. A standard CSV export from most other banks and fintech apps will generally work too.

Categorization behaviour described here matches MuntSnap and the MuntLab app as of September 2026. This article is general information, not financial advice.