Preparing a bank statement CSV for import

Accounting tools can import bank transactions from CSV, but they are picky. Most failed imports come from a handful of formatting problems that are easy to fix beforehand.

What importers usually want

One row per transaction with a date, a description and either a single signed amount or separate debit and credit columns. Check your software's import help for its exact layout, since column names and options differ between products.

Pick one sign convention

Decide whether money out is negative or positive and keep it consistent. Mixed conventions are the most common cause of totals that look right but categorise wrongly.

Dates

Use an unambiguous format such as 2026-03-04 where you can. Day/month versus month/day confusion silently swaps dates for any day number of 12 or less.

Amounts

Remove currency symbols and thousands separators if the importer rejects them, and make sure negatives are not wrapped in parentheses unless the importer understands that.

Verify before you import

Once transactions are in the books they are harder to undo. Check that opening balance plus the rows equals the closing balance on the statement first. A missing row found after import means finding it in the ledger instead.

Where PennyTie fits

PennyTie converts a text-based PDF statement to CSV in your browser and checks the balance arithmetic, so the file you import is complete.

Try it: open PennyTie, drop a text-based statement PDF (or use the built-in fictional sample). Free for statements up to 5 pages; nothing is uploaded.

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