PDF bank statement converter for UK bookkeepers

Statements from UK banks

Clients send statements from the high-street banks such as Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds, NatWest, Santander UK and Nationwide, from app banks such as Monzo and Starling, and from credit card providers. Some print paid-out and paid-in columns, others a single amount column, and some only a balance on the last line of each day.

There’s no list of supported banks to wait for: the converter reads each statement’s layout instead of relying on a template per bank. It’s designed for English-language PDF statements. Results vary by layout, so try one of your client’s statements with the free pages before you rely on it.

Guides for UK banks

Where to find PDF statements in online banking, how far back they go, and what each bank exports by itself.

• Barclays statements
• HSBC UK statements
• Lloyds statements
• NatWest statements
• Monzo statements

Xero in the UK

Xero only reads PDF bank statements for organisations in the US and Canada. Everywhere else, a PDF has to become a CSV or OFX file before Xero will import it. Export the Xero statement CSV, or OFX with the sort code and account number, and import it with Manage account › Import a statement.

QuickBooks Online in the UK

Export a 3-column CSV (one signed amount) or a 4-column CSV laid out as in QuickBooks’ UK help, with payments in Credit and deposits in Debit. Files are split to fit QuickBooks’ limit of 1,000 lines and 350 KB per upload.

QuickBooks Online can now read a PDF or a photo of a statement itself. Converting first is still worth it when you want each statement checked against its balances and reviewed line by line before anything is imported, or when the same file has to go into Excel or Xero as well.

Sage Accounting and FreeAgent

Both list OFX among the bank statement files they import, so the OFX export is usually the easiest route. The general CSV is there if you’d rather map columns yourself.

Client data

Files and results are deleted 24 hours after upload, or straight away if you delete them. Before uploading client statements, read the privacy notice: it names every company that processes statement data and where.