Convert US bank statements to Excel, CSV or QBO

US bank statements follow a few habits that matter when you turn them into a spreadsheet. Dates are written month first, as MM/DD or MM/DD/YYYY, and many statements print only the month and day on each transaction line, leaving the year to the statement period at the top. A converter has to take the year from that period, and a December to January statement needs two different years on its rows. Amounts use a dot for cents and a comma for thousands, always in US dollars for a domestic checking account.

Many large US banks do not print one running list of transactions. They group the activity into sections such as deposits and additions, checks paid, card purchases, other withdrawals and fees, each with its own subtotal. Some sections show no running balance at all, and others print a daily ending balance table at the end. To check the result, we rebuild the sequence from the beginning balance, the section totals and the ending balance, and we flag any row where the numbers do not agree.

Checks get their own treatment: a check number, the date it was paid and the amount, sometimes with an image page that holds no data for the spreadsheet. Long merchant descriptions often wrap onto a second line, and card purchases repeat the card number tail and the purchase date inside the description. If you import into QuickBooks, the QBO Web Connect file gives each row a transaction id built from its date, amount and description, so importing the same statement twice does not create duplicates. Many US banks let you download recent activity from online banking, usually as CSV and sometimes as QFX or QBO, but the date range is limited and differs by bank and account. The PDF statement covers older months and is the document lenders and accountants usually ask for. The bank pages below say what each bank offers.