Importing data from Banana
Move your complete Banana accounting — chart of accounts, opening balances, transactions and contacts — across from the XML exports of your fiscal years.
What you need
Your Banana accounting files as an XML export, one file per fiscal year. The XML export also works with the free Banana plan.
WARNING
The import is meant for new organizations switching from Banana to Blond. It sets up your chart of accounts, your VAT settings and your fiscal years, and switches accounting on. If you already keep your books in Blond, talk to support first.
Note
Only double-entry accounting files can be imported. Cash-book style files without a counter-account are detected during the analysis and flagged per file.
Starting the import
Open the importer at https://app.blond.swiss/importer/banana. It runs in four steps: Export → Upload → Mapping → Import.
1. Export from Banana
In Banana, open each year file separately and choose File → Export file → Export to Xml. Enable all tables and all columns and choose Export as data.
Repeat this for every fiscal year you want to bring across.
TIP
Include every year you still want to see in Blond. Blond chains the years automatically: opening balances come from each file, and the upload order doesn't matter.
2. Upload the files
Upload the XML files of all fiscal years at once (up to 15 files, max. 50 MB each) and click Analyze files. Blond only reads the files at this point — nothing is imported yet.
3. Mapping and options
The analysis shows the detected fiscal year and the number of transactions per file. Then you resolve the things Blond can't decide on its own:
Accounts without a valid number: Blond works with four-digit account numbers from 1000 to 9999. Banana accounts outside that range (letter-based accounts, for instance) need a new number — otherwise their transactions aren't imported.
Unknown VAT codes: Standard codes are mapped automatically. If a code is left over, pick the matching VAT rate. Leave the field empty and the affected transactions are imported without VAT.
Create customers and suppliers as contacts: Optionally, the addresses from Banana are imported as companies and contacts. Independently of that, the individual customer and supplier accounts in your transactions are collapsed onto the collective accounts 1100 (debtors) and 2000 (creditors) — the name is kept in the booking text.
VAT: Choose your accounting method (effective or net tax rate). This setting then applies to your whole organization — with the net tax rate method you also enter your rates.
A few things happen automatically and need no input:
| Situation | What Blond does |
|---|---|
| Unallocated prior-year profit in the opening balances | Booked to account 2979 (profit/loss carryforward) |
| Cost centers from Banana | Stored along with the data, but not visible in Blond yet |
| Past fiscal years | Closed automatically at the end of the import; the current year stays open |
4. Import in progress
The import runs in the background in two phases: first the transactions are created, then they're booked into the journal. The progress bar covers both phases — with several years this takes a few minutes.
You can keep the window open; the import also keeps running if you close the tab.
Checking the reconciliation
At the end, Blond shows you a report:
- Imported and skipped transactions — including a list of the rows that couldn't be processed, with the reason.
- Reconciliation — Blond compares the computed balances against the balances in your Banana files. If they all match, the migration is complete.
WARNING
If the reconciliation shows differences (computed ≠ expected), check the affected accounts in the chart of accounts before you carry on booking in Blond. Usually a skipped transaction or a missing account mapping is behind it.
Running the import again
You can safely re-run the import. Every transaction carries its Banana origin as a marker, so existing transactions are updated rather than duplicated — and opening balances are only booked once.
That's useful when you add a missing account mapping afterwards, or want to pull in another fiscal year.
When something goes wrong
If the import fails, you'll see the error message right in the wizard. Contact support@blond.swiss with a screenshot — send the XML exports along if you can, so we can reproduce the case.