TD Bank Statement pdf to excel converter

Introduction

One problem that I recently came across is to convert a client’s TD Bank statement to Excel.

I need to do this to copy the data into one of the accounting software like Xero. TD Bank does provide a download to CSV option, but seems limited by date.

Seems like a easy job right? Ended up being a pain in the backside.

In this post, I will go over what I found to be the most accurate and quickest way to do this.

About TD bank

If you are living outside of Canada or the US, you may never heard of TD bank. Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD Bank) is one of the largest and most prominent financial institutions in Canada. They offer things like banking services including personal and commercial banking, wealth management, and insurance.

So is it a US Bank?

Sometimes people get confused if its a Canadian or US bank. Besides its strong presence in Canada, TD Bank has significant operations in the United States (TD Bank - America’s Most Convenient Bank) with a substantial number of branches along the East Coast.

Step 1: Download the bank statement from EasyWeb

The first step is to get your bank statement from TD bank. The most obvious way is from their EasyWeb portal.

1. First log in to EasyWeb.
2. Navigate to the Accounts Page.
3. On left-hand menu, and there you’ll find the Statements & Documents option.
4. Now that you’re on the Statements & Documents page, you’ll notice dropdown menus. You can sift through your statements until you find the one you to extract to Excel. Once found, a simple click will open it up for you.
5. A final overlay will open with the bank statement PDF!

The experience might slightly vary if you’re using Adobe Reader or Google Chrome to view your statement. In Adobe Reader, your statement will pop up in a new window. If Adobe Reader is not yet installed on your computer, you can download it here.

If you have Google Chrome, your statement will open within the browser.

Analysis of the TD bank statement

From first glance the statement seem to be quite simple. So I was hoping not much data cleaning is required.

• There are 3 columns: “Posting Date”, “Description”, “Amount”
• The transaction date does not have the year and follows the format of month/day. We will need to add year if our statement span between years to make it less confusing.
• The deposits and credits to the account is split up into two tables - “Electronic Deposits”, “Electronic Payments”. This might be tricky if we need to merge these tables to import them to a accounting software!

Step 2: Upload it into PdfDodo and export the Excel file

We can use PdfDodo on the free tier to extract our data to excel from the TD bank statement PDF.

To do start the Excel conversion, we go through the following steps:

• Step 1: Get an account with PdfDodo
• Step 2: Go to the home page and click “Upload Document”

• Step 3: After the document has uploaded - click “Start Analysis”. This will usually take a few seconds.

• Step 4: Click on the uploaded document link to see the results.

After PdfDodo has completed analysis, it will list out all the data that it thinks is in a table format.

Now we can see our result and download the Excel or CSV file:

Alternative: Convert PDF to Word using Microsoft Word

If you already have Microsoft Word installed, then you can try this option. Essentially, we use Word to open up our PDF TD Bank statement and then once its converted, we can copy/paste it into Excel.

The process is quite straightforward:

• Step 1: Launch Microsoft Word.
• Step 2: Choose a PDF file. If successful, Word will transform the PDF into a Word document. Note that you may receive a notification indicating the conversion might take some time, especially if the PDF is large.
• Step 3: Locate your transaction table and copy the rows and columns, then paste them into Excel.

From my experience with working with TD bank statements, this option is not great!

• Text are moved across the page in random places
• The dates are not right - converted to something random.
• The balance values are not correct

Now if we copy this across to Excel - it can be disastrous as well. For example I was copying the “Payments” table, and the rows are all over the place.

The numbers are not correct and the description was missing stuff too:

Limitations

• You may end up spending more time to clean up and double checking the data to see if its right.
• Method is ineffective for scanned PDF bank statements
• Does not work with encrypted PDFs

Alternative 2: Convert within Excel

Another option is to use Excel itself. You can choose this option if you have Microsoft 365 subscription.

Older versions like 2019 or 2016 won’t have this feature.

• Step 1: Launch Excel.
• Step 2: Navigate to the “Data” tab.
• Step 3: Follow this path: Get data > From file > From PDF.
• Step 4: Choose the PDF file and hit ‘Import’.

You’ll then encounter the Navigator panel, displaying the tables and pages from your PDF with a preview.

• Step 5: Pick the table you want and click on ‘Load’. The selected table will be imported into your Excel worksheet

Pros and Cons

• Convenient setup for those with Excel already installed on their machines; a direct route to tackle TD bank statements.
• Minimal data cleansing needed, making it a straightforward experience.
• Feature exclusive to newer versions of Excel on Microsoft 365, especially with Enterprise subscriptions.
• Older Excel versions like 2019 or 2016 miss out on this option.
• Scanned or password-protected statements are a no-go; this feature thrives on direct digital data transfer.

Step 3: Clean the data

The final step is to clean up the data. There are two issues that we need to fix to be able to import it to accounting software such as Xero or QuickBooks.

• Update the dates so that it includes the Years
• Combine the two tables so that the deposits and payments are merged.

Final thoughts

Overall I found converting TD bank statements to Excel to be quite simple if we use PdfDodo as an option. It will get you 99% of the way there. All you need to do is to clean up the Excel file for your accounting software.

The conversion is accurate and quick. Other alternatives such as Microsoft Word or Excel can have challenges.

Using Microsoft Word just gives you garbage - so I would recommend not to use this.

If you have Microsoft Office 365 subscription, using Excel -> “Get Data” is a ok option. It still misses some rows and had trouble with nested tables.