Convert a bank statement PDF to CSV

How to convert a bank statement PDF to CSV

1. Download the statement as a PDFUse the PDF from online banking or your banking app, not a scan or photo. Most UK banks keep it under “Statements” or “Documents”. Our bank pages describe where to look for each bank.
2. Choose it in the converter aboveClick “Choose a PDF statement” or drop the file on the box. If the PDF has a password, you’ll be asked for it.
3. Read the balance checkA green “Verified” means every row’s balance follows from the one before and the totals reach the printed closing balance exactly. Anything else is pointed out row by row.
4. Download the CSVChoose the CSV for Excel, or the Xero or QuickBooks layout. The file is created on your computer.

What is in the CSV

The standard CSV has one row per transaction and five columns: Date, Description, Paid in, Paid out and Balance. Dates are written the UK way (dd/mm/yyyy). Amounts are plain numbers with two decimal places and no £ sign or thousands separator, so Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers and accounting software read them as numbers rather than text.

Descriptions that wrap onto two or three lines on the statement are joined back into one cell. Page headers, “brought forward” and “carried forward” lines, and the statement’s summary box are left out, because they are not transactions.

Why the balance check matters

Most statement converters stop once they have pulled rows out of the PDF. The hard part is knowing whether they got all the rows, and got each one right. A single missed line, or a payment read as money in instead of money out, makes every figure after it wrong, and it is easy not to notice until a reconciliation fails weeks later.

A UK bank statement prints a running balance, and that balance is a built-in answer key. StatementToCSV recalculates it for every row: previous balance, plus money in, minus money out. If the result differs from the printed balance, the converter tells you which row and by exactly how much, which usually points straight at the missing transaction. It also checks the opening and closing balances, and compares the statement’s printed totals (such as “Total paid in”) with the transactions it found. What a running balance check proves explains this in more detail.

What it can’t convert yet

The converter needs a text PDF, the kind banks produce for download. Scanned paper statements and photos of statements are images and would need OCR, which isn’t supported yet. Statements without any running balance still convert, but are marked “Unverified” because there is nothing to check the rows against. If a statement doesn’t convert well, the “Help us support this layout” button creates an anonymised report of its layout for you to email to us.

Converting a whole year

If you have twelve monthly statements, choose “Several statements” and add them all at once. The converter checks that the months join up, finds gaps, duplicates and overlapping periods, and gives you one combined CSV. See combining multiple bank statements.