Twelve months of bank statements, twelve PDFs, each with two hundred transactions. The client wants reconciliation by Friday. Typing it manually is a non-starter.
PDF to Excel was built for this exact job. The trick is knowing how to handle the cases where it doesn't work cleanly.
Text-layer vs scanned statements
Modern banks generate statements as text-layer PDFs — the transactions are text, not images. These convert perfectly. Scanned paper statements are image-only and need OCR before conversion. Convert PDF to Excel handles text-layer statements out of the box; for scans, you may need to OCR first or accept lower accuracy.
The standard workflow
Upload the statement, choose Excel as the output, and review the result. Columns typically come through as Date, Description, Money Out, Money In, Balance. Spot-check the running balance — if it matches the statement's closing balance, the conversion is clean. If it's off, scan for missed rows or misaligned columns.
Cleaning up after extraction
In Excel, add a Category column and start coding transactions. Filter by description keywords ("AMZN", "TFL", "SAINSBURYS") to bulk-assign categories. The Excel format means you can pivot, sum, and feed straight into your bookkeeping software — none of which is possible from a PDF.
Handling many statements
If you've got twelve months of statements, convert them one by one and merge in Excel. Or, merge the PDFs first into a single annual statement and convert once. The single-conversion approach is faster but can compound any errors; per-statement gives you a checkpoint each month.
FAQ
Does Flint OCR scanned bank statements?
Text-layer PDFs convert directly. For scanned PDFs without an existing text layer, accuracy drops — consider re-downloading from the bank's portal in PDF format.
What if the columns come through misaligned?
Manually correct in Excel — usually a sort or a split-text operation. For unusual statement layouts, expect some clean-up.
Can I extract just specific date ranges?
Convert the whole statement, then filter in Excel by the date column. Filtering after conversion is faster than splitting the PDF first.
Will my categorisation in Excel save back to the PDF?
No — Excel and PDF are separate. The PDF is the source of truth for what the bank reported; Excel is your working analysis.
Bank statement extraction turns a day's manual typing into a half-hour task. Convert your first statement in Flint and you'll feel the time back immediately.