CSV file format for loading Data

RealTime CEO requires a Balance Sheet and Income Statement to be loaded once the accounts are finished each month.  These files must be in a CSV (comma-separated values) format. Here are the requirements for the layout and content of the CSV files.

CSV file requirements:

• 2 Columns only: Column A with the account descriptions (and/or account numbers) and Column B with the account values.
• Cell A1: must contain words to describe the file – e.g. Income Statement or Balance Sheet
• Cell B1: must contain the month/year of the file – e.g. Jan 21
• No duplicate accounts: The file must not contain any duplicate account descriptions because the software uses a tagging mechanism on the account description to identify the account.  Note that an account description without a value (e.g. a heading) and the same account description with a value, is not considered a duplicate.
  See What are Duplicate Accounts in CSV files and how to fix them? and How to load and check Monthly Data
• Income Statement Totals: the Income Statement must contain the following Totals (they do not need to match these descriptions): Revenue, Direct Costs, Indirect Costs, Net Profit (if your Income Statement has Distributions, then Net Profit should be before Tax and Distributions).
• Balance Sheet Totals: the Balance Sheet must contain the following Totals (they do not need to match these descriptions): Assets, Liabilities, and Equity.
• Value Signs: The values must be positive if they are their true account sign.  Most (but not all) accounting systems output reports showing Revenues and Expenses as positives, and Assets, Liabilities, and Equity as positives.  The only negatives are usually when there is a negative expense in an expense account etc.  There is one exception to this rule:
  • Miscellaneous Income Statement accounts tagged as Non-Operational need to be as follows:
    • Expenses should be negatives if they are their true account sign.
    • Revenues should be positive if they are their true account sign.
  • This is because the Miscellaneous Non Operational tag can be applied to both revenues and expenses and therefore we need to distinguish.  Every other Income Statement tag only has one application – it’s either a revenue or an expense.
  • The Miscellaneous Non Operational tag may apply to some accounts in the Other Income/Other Expense section of your Income Statement.

See How to load and check Monthly Data for more information on getting the data into the correct format for loading into RTC, using some Excel tips.

Download example files:

Example Income Statement CSV

Example Balance Sheet CSV