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stmtai

Bank statement conversion.
For bookkeepers.

You keep the books for a dozen or more clients, and every one of them banks somewhere different. Some connect a feed, some send PDFs, and at least two still post you paper. The first week of the month is spent getting all of that into a state you can reconcile.

What the work looks like

A typical month is 15 to 25 clients with 30 to 50 bank and card accounts between them. Perhaps half arrive through a bank feed; the rest come as PDF statements, forwarded emails and the occasional photo of a paper statement. Statements for the month land between the 1st and the 10th, and management accounts are due by the 15th or 20th. Each statement is 2 to 8 pages, and a client with a busy card account can run to 15. The work is the same every month, and it is the part of the job nobody pays extra for.

Where the time goes

  • Bank feeds drop out, duplicate a week, or skip the last three days of the month, and you only find out when the reconciliation does not balance.
  • Copying from a PDF into a spreadsheet loses the sign on refunds and merges two-line descriptions into the amount column.
  • A single mistyped figure in 200 rows means an evening hunting for a difference that turns out to be a transposed 47 and 74.
  • Every bank lays the statement out differently, so the fix that worked for one client does nothing for the next.
  • Month-end for 15 clients does not fit in the week the clients think it takes.
  • When a statement is re-issued or a client sends the wrong month, you cannot tell from the file name; you find out from the opening balance.

How it runs with stmtai

  1. Collect the month's PDFs and drop them in as a batch of up to 12 files, so one client's current, savings and card statements go through together.
  2. Read the balance check on each file. Every conversion is summed and compared to the printed opening and closing balances; a difference is flagged on the exact row that caused it.
  3. Fix the flagged row in place, usually a page-break split or a faint figure, and re-run the check until it agrees.
  4. Include last month's statement in the batch and the continuity check confirms this month's opening balance against last month's closing before you import anything.
  5. Export in the format the client's software wants: a QuickBooks .qbo, a Xero CSV, or Excel with a Summary sheet and categories for the clients you keep in spreadsheets.
  6. Come back within the 7-day history if a client queries a figure or you need to re-download for a second file.

Try it on a real statement

5 pages free, no account. You will know in under a minute whether it balances.

Drop your bank statements here

One file or a whole year. PDF, scanned image, CSV, QIF or OFX. Up to 12 files at a time; long PDFs are split for you.

Not ready to upload your own? See a sample result

Which plan fits

Pro at 300 pages a month covers a practice of 15 to 20 clients with a few accounts each. If you take on more clients or bring on a second bookkeeper who needs to convert as well, Business adds team seats and 1,200 pages.

Work it out from your own numbers.

Export formats you will use

Guides for this work

Questions

Does this replace the bank feed?

No. Where a feed works, keep it. This is for the accounts that do not have one, the months a feed misses, and the back-fill when you take on a client with a year of PDFs. Because every file is checked against the printed balances, it is also a useful cross-check when you suspect a feed has dropped transactions.

Can I run several clients through in one go?

A batch takes up to 12 files, and each file is treated separately with its own balance check and its own export. The sensible unit is one client per batch, so the exports come out grouped and the continuity check is comparing the right months of the right account.

What happens when a page is scanned badly?

The balance check will not agree, and the row that breaks it is flagged. You fix that row in place and the check re-runs. If the whole page is unreadable you will see that too, and you will need a better copy from the client; there is no way to invent the figures and nothing here tries to.

How do pages get counted?

One PDF page is one page against the monthly allowance, whether it has three transactions or sixty. Pages are counted when a file is converted, so a client sending a 40-page annual statement uses 40 pages of the 300 on Pro. Unused pages do not roll over, but a Pages Pack never expires if you want a buffer for busy months.

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