Varo Believe to Monarch

Convert Varo Believe credit card PDF statements to Monarch Money CSV format. No more manual data entry — point the tool at your statements and get a Monarch-ready CSV in seconds.

Why Varo Believe specifically? Varo's regular checking and savings accounts connect to Monarch Money directly via Plaid. Only Varo Believe (the secured credit card) lacks Plaid support, so transactions must be imported manually from the monthly PDF statement.

GUI	CLI

Features

• 🖥️ User-Friendly GUI: Graphical interface for non-technical users (also available as standalone executables)
• 📄 Hybrid PDF Extraction: Uses PyMuPDF for table-based extraction and pdfplumber for text-based parsing to capture all transactions, including multi-line descriptions that span page boundaries
• 🔄 Parallel Processing: Process multiple PDFs concurrently with configurable worker count
• 📊 Progress Tracking: Rich progress bars with per-file status
• 💰 Smart Amount Handling: Automatically applies correct sign per section (purchases negative, payments positive, etc.)
• 🎯 Intelligent Section Detection: Identifies and categorizes Purchases, Payments/Credits, Fees, and Secured Account transactions
• 🏦 Account Mapping: Maps transactions to the correct account (Varo Believe Card vs Varo Secured Account)
• 🏷️ Auto-Categorization: Secured Account transactions are automatically tagged as Transfer in the Category column; credit card transactions are left uncategorized for Monarch to classify
• 📊 Account Summary: After each run the tool prints the exact balance and limit values to enter when creating accounts in Monarch Money
• 📝 Monarch-Ready Output: CSV with the exact columns Monarch Money expects

Installation

Option 1: Standalone Executable (Recommended for Non-Technical Users)

Download the pre-built executable for your OS from the Releases page:

• Windows: varo-to-monarch-windows.exe
• macOS (Apple Silicon): varo-to-monarch-macos-apple-silicon.app.zip (M1/M2/M3/M4, extract and run)
• macOS (Intel): varo-to-monarch-macos-intel.app.zip (pre-2020 Macs, extract and run)
• Linux: varo-to-monarch-linux

No installation required — just download and run.

macOS: opening an unsigned app

Because the app isn't notarized by Apple, macOS will block it the first time. To open it:

1. Extract the .zip and double-click VaroToMonarch.app — you'll see a "cannot be opened" alert. Click Done (not Move to Trash).
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and scroll down to the Security section.
3. You'll see a message like "VaroToMonarch was blocked" — click Open Anyway.
4. A final confirmation prompt appears — click Open.

You only need to do this once. After that, double-clicking the app works normally. This is standard macOS behavior for any app downloaded outside the App Store — see Apple's documentation for more details.

Option 2: Install via pip

pip install varo-to-monarch

Option 3: From Source

git clone https://github.com/Blacksuan19/varo-believe-to-monarch.git
cd varo-believe-to-monarch
pip install .

Usage

GUI

Standalone executable: double-click the downloaded file.

Installed package:

vtm-gui

The GUI lets you:

1. Select the folder containing your Varo PDF statements
2. Choose the output CSV path (defaults to varo_monarch_combined.csv in the input folder)
3. Optionally set a filename pattern, worker count, and whether to include the source filename column

Click Convert to Monarch CSV and watch the progress bar. Once complete, an Account Summary panel appears showing the exact balance and limit values to enter when creating accounts in Monarch Money.

CLI

Basic usage — convert all PDFs in a folder:

vtm path/to/statements

Output is written to path/to/statements/varo_monarch_combined.csv by default. An account summary is printed after each run showing the exact values to enter when creating accounts in Monarch Money.

All options:

vtm [OPTIONS] [FOLDER]

Arguments:
  FOLDER  Directory containing Varo PDF statements

Options:
  -o, --output PATH               Output CSV file path
  -p, --pattern TEXT              Glob pattern for PDFs (default: *.pdf)
  -w, --workers INT               Parallel workers (default: auto)
      --include-file-names /
      --no-include-file-names     Include/exclude SourceFile column (default: include)
  -h, --help                      Show this message and exit

Examples:

# Custom output path
vtm ./statements --output ~/monarch_import.csv

# Process only a specific statement
vtm ./statements --pattern "2025-12.pdf"

# Use 4 parallel workers
vtm ./statements --workers 4

# Omit the source filename column from output
vtm ./statements --no-include-file-names

Output Format

Importing into Monarch Money

Note: CSV imports are available on web only (not the mobile app). If you need to undo an import, delete the account in Monarch — it will offer to remove the imported transactions at that point. See Monarch's full import guide for reference.

1. On the Monarch web app, go to Accounts and click + Add Account.

2. Click "Import transaction & balance history", then "Import transactions".

3. Upload the generated CSV file.

4. Monarch will auto-detect the column mappings (Date, Merchant Name, Account, Amount) — confirm them and proceed.

5. On the "Assign CSV accounts to Monarch accounts" screen you'll see two entries. For each one, open the dropdown and choose "Create a new account" with the appropriate type:

   CSV Account	Account type to create	Balance / Limit
   Varo Believe Card	Credit Card	Current balance and credit limit — shown in the Account Summary printed by the tool
   Varo Secured Account	Checking or Savings	Balance — shown in the Account Summary printed by the tool

6. Choose how to handle overlapping transactions:

   • Prioritize CSV — replaces any existing transactions in the date range
   • Prioritize Monarch — keeps existing data, only imports earlier missing ones
   • Import all — imports everything, may create duplicates

7. Review the summary and click Import transactions to finish.

Tip: On repeat imports, select the existing Monarch accounts instead of creating new ones to avoid duplicates.

How It Works

The tool uses a two-pass hybrid extraction strategy:

1. Table extraction (PyMuPDF) — detects and extracts transaction tables directly from the PDF structure. Handles Purchases, Fees, Payments and Credits, and Secured Account Transactions sections.

2. Text parsing (pdfplumber) — line-by-line fallback for transactions that table detection misses. All pages are flattened into a single line list before parsing so that multi-line descriptions split across page boundaries are correctly merged.

3. Deduplication — results from both passes are merged; rows already captured by table extraction are not duplicated from the text pass.

4. Section-based classification — each transaction is assigned the correct account and amount sign based on which section it appears in:

   Section	Sign	Account
   Purchases	negative	Varo Believe Card
   Fees	negative	Varo Believe Card
   Payments and Credits	positive	Varo Believe Card
   Secured Account Transactions	from PDF	Varo Secured Account

5. Post-processing — description-based rules override section assignments where needed (e.g. transfer descriptions always go to Varo Secured Account regardless of which table they appear in).

Supported Transaction Types

Varo Believe Card

• Credit card purchases
• Fees and charges
• Payments and credits

Varo Secured Account

• Transfers from Secured Account to Believe Card (Trf from Vault to Charge C Bal)
• Transfers from Secured Account to Checking (Transfer from Vault to DDA)
• Deposits into Secured Account (Move Your Pay - Chk to Believe)

Requirements

• Python 3.8 or higher

Troubleshooting

No transactions extracted:

• Make sure the PDFs are genuine Varo Bank statements
• Check that the files are not password-protected or corrupted

Missing transactions:

• The tool handles multi-page statements automatically
• Try --workers 1 to rule out any concurrency issues

Wrong amounts or accounts:

• Open an issue on GitHub with a redacted sample statement

Development

# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/Blacksuan19/varo-believe-to-monarch.git
cd varo-believe-to-monarch
pip install -e .

# Version bump
bumpver update --patch   # 0.4.0 → 0.4.1
bumpver update --minor   # 0.4.0 → 0.5.0

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please submit a Pull Request.

License

GNU General Public License v3 — see LICENSE for details.

Disclaimer

This tool is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Varo Bank or Monarch Money. Use at your own risk. Always verify converted data before importing into Monarch Money.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to leetmastah for testing the Windows and macOS binaries.