TOP 3 Ways to Export US Bank Statement to Excel

Introduction

A recent problem I ran into was trying to convert a US Bank statement into Excel. I was planning to use this data to do projections and also send them away for accountant to prepare my taxes.

The problem is that it is not as easy as a copy/paste - PDFs are such a pain! Now U.S Bank provides an option to download the transactions as CSV/Excel. However this is only limited within a certain period.

We are stuck with statements that are too old (eg 7 years)!

To extract this data, I had to use PdfDodo to do the job - its free and gets me 99% of the way there!

Generally I follow three steps:

1. Download the bank statement
2. Convert the bank statement to excel using software
3. Clean the data in Excel

In this post I will go over 3 converters that I found and compare them on how easy to do US bank statement PDF conversion to Excel.

Step 1: Download the bank statement

The first step is to download your PDF bank statement. You can do this online or using the App.

Online banking

• Head to the top menu and click on ‘My Accounts’, then hop over to ‘My Documents’.
• Hit ‘Statement’ and then from the drop-down, pick the account you want to check out.
• If you can’t see the year you’re looking for right away, you’ll have a chance to choose it. When you’re ready, just click ‘Download’ to see and print your statement in a flash.

U.S. Bank Mobile App

• Open the main menu at the top left and tap ‘Statements & docs’, then go to ‘eStatements’.
• Use the drop-down to choose which account’s statements you wanna see.
• Select the year you need — if it doesn’t pop up straight away — and hit ‘Download’ to check out and print your statement on the spot."

Analysis of the US Bank statement

To get a accurate conversion, we need to have a look at what the US Bank statement looks like first.

That way we can save a bit of time in the clean up process!

Some observations of the bank statement

• The bank statement has 4 columns: “Date”, “Description of Transaction”, “Ref Number”, and “Amount”
• For the “Date” column there is no “Year”. So we will need to fill this out when we are dealing with statements that go over a few years.
• The “Amount” display is a bit weird - the positive/negative signs (+-) appear at the end.
• The description can take up multiple rows

Step 2. Convert the bank statement to excel using software

Option 1: PdfDodo

One option is to use PdfDodo to convert your PDF bank statements to Excel format.

To do this 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.

• Step 5: Find the table that you are interested in and hit “Excel”

Benefits

Now using this tool comes with a few benefits:

• Totally free to use for speedy PDF to Excel conversions.
• Works with PDF bank statements that are scanned or direct from the bank (text-based PDFs)
• Able to do bulk conversions
• 99% accuracy rate, thanks to the smart OCR and AI tech that can do data cleansing.
• Can handle encrypted and password-protected PDFs
• Keep your info safe — it is GDPR complaint and runs on SSL and heavy-duty encryption

Option 2: Using Microsoft Word

If you already have Microsoft Word and don’t want to use an online tool - guess what? Microsoft Word can do this!

Mind blown?

If you have Word 2013 or higher you can do PDF to Word conversion. After that - you can just copy the tables into Excel.

Steps to do this:

1. Fire up Microsoft Word.
2. Hit “File” up in the top-left corner.
3. Click on “Open”.
4. Find where your PDF is saved.
5. Select your PDF and hit “Open”. Just a heads up: Word will create a copy while converting it, so your original PDF won’t be messed with.
6. Click “OK” to kick off the conversion.

Pros and Cons

• Converting can be kinda hit or miss. If Word can’t do the conversion, it’ll just keep it as a picture, and you’ll have to type it in yourself.
• Occasionally, the columns get all messed up — like, you’ll have 2 columns instead of the 4 you wanted.
• If you’ve got Microsoft Word (2013 or later), you’re all set to turn files into PDFs without needing anything extra.
• It’s a pretty simple thing to do if you know your way around Word, and it doesn’t cost a thing compared to some PDF tools out there.
• Plus, all the converting happens offline, so your private docs stay with you and not online.

Option 3: Use Adobe Pro

• Step 1: Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat - Launch Adobe Acrobat and open the PDF file you wish to convert.
• Step 2. Export the PDF - Navigate to File in the top-left corner, then select Export To from the dropdown menu.
• Step 3. Choose Spreadsheet Option - From the sub-menu of the export options, select Spreadsheet and then choose Microsoft Excel Workbook. Note: Adobe Acrobat doesn’t provide a direct “export to Excel” option, so we first convert to Excel.
• Step 4. Save the File - Choose a location on your computer to save the Excel file and click Save.
• Step 5. Open the Excel File - After the conversion is completed, open the resulting Excel file in Microsoft Excel.
• Step 6. Save the File as Excel - In Excel, go to File -> Save As.

Choose the location where you want to save your Excel file. From the “Save as type” dropdown, select Excel (Comma delimited) (*.Excel) and then click Save.

Now, you should have your PDF content in a Excel format.

Limitations:

• I found that the accuracy of this good for some instances, but can be hit and miss.
• You will have to pay for Adobe Pro - which can be quite steep.

Final thoughts

Overall the US Bank bank statement is moderately easy to convert to Excel -> you just need to know a few tricks when doing the data cleansing.

An important step is to select the software that will do the conversion accurately and quickly for you!

PdfDodo is free can get you 99% of the way there - you just need to do a bit of clean up afterwards.

This can include adding the year, removing any columns that you do not really need.

If you decide to Microsoft Word or Adobe Pro, then you might have to spend more time with the data clean up. I found they do not combine the rows for multiple pages and do not have enrichment features such as determining the statement periods.

They are ok as generic PDF to Excel converters but will fall short in specific cases like this.