Bank statement
to CSV and Excel

Why turn a PDF statement into a spreadsheet

Most banking apps hand you statements as PDFs. A PDF is built to be printed and read, not worked with: you cannot sort it, total a column, filter for one supplier or paste it into your bookkeeping. Copying a month of transactions out of a PDF by hand is slow, and every retyped figure is a chance to slip a digit, which then shows up months later as a balance that will not tie.

This converter does the retyping for you. It reads each transaction line from the statement, keeps the amounts exactly as printed, and gives you a CSV or an Excel file you can open straight away. Then it checks its own work against the balances your bank printed, which is the part a copy and paste never does.

It is built for sole traders, landlords and anyone who keeps their own books, but it works for any UK personal or business current account statement. You do not need an account to use it, and the statement is read and discarded: nothing about it is kept.

How it works

1. Download the PDF from your bank. Every UK bank lets you save statements from its app or online banking. The file your bank produces works best, because its text can be read exactly. A scan or a photo of a printed statement works too; it just takes a little longer.
2. Drop it into the converter. One statement at a time, up to 10 pages. If the PDF is password-protected you will be asked for the password, which is used once to open it and never stored.
3. Check the balance check. The converter adds every transaction to the opening balance and compares the result with the closing balance on the statement. When they agree to the penny, you know no line was dropped or misread. When they do not, the rows that break the running balance are highlighted for you to compare with the PDF.
4. Download CSV or Excel. Both are built in your browser from what was read, so the file never makes a second trip to a server.

The columns in your file

Every statement comes out in the same six columns, in the same order, whichever bank it came from. A file made from your January statement lines up with one made from February, so you can paste a year of months into one sheet and keep going.

Descriptions that happen to start with an equals sign, a plus or a minus are written so a spreadsheet shows them as text and never runs them as a formula. Only the last four digits of an account number are ever read from the statement; the full number is not taken at all.

The balance check, and why it matters

A statement carries its own proof. It prints an opening balance, every transaction, and a closing balance, and the three must agree: opening balance, plus money in, minus money out, equals closing balance. Many statements also print a running balance on each line. The converter uses all of it.

If the total agrees to the penny, the file is complete. If it does not, the converter walks the running balance line by line and marks the first row where it stops adding up, then carries on from the next printed balance, so one misread line is flagged on its own rather than every line after it. You see the difference in pounds, and the rows to check, before you download anything.

Some statements, often from building societies or older accounts, do not print an opening and closing balance. Then the converter says the total could not be checked, rather than claiming a check it did not make.

CSV or Excel: which to download

Both files hold the same rows. Pick by what you will do next.

The Excel file stores dates as real dates in the UK day, month, year order, and amounts as numbers with two decimal places, so a SUM or a pivot table works on it straight away. The header row is frozen and has filters on, so you can narrow a busy month to one supplier in two clicks.

Getting the PDF from your bank

In most UK banking apps, statements sit under the account itself, in a section called Statements or Documents, where each month can be viewed and then saved or shared as a PDF. In online banking the same option is usually next to the transaction list. Save the file rather than taking screenshots: the saved PDF keeps the text layer, which is read exactly and quickly.

Password-protected statements

Some banks lock their statement PDFs with a password, often your date of birth or part of your account number, and say so in the email or screen that gave you the file. The converter asks for it, uses it once to open the file, and does not keep it. A password-protected statement needs its text layer to be read, so a locked scan cannot be converted; download the original from your bank instead.

Long statements

The free converter reads statements of up to 10 pages, which covers a month for almost every sole trader. A free TapTax account reads statements of up to 40 pages, so a busy quarter or a full year in one file is fine there.

Why sole traders need their statements in a usable form

HMRC expects the self-employed to keep records of all business income and expenses, and lists bank statements among the proof to keep. Those records have to last: they must be kept for at least five years after the 31 January deadline for the tax year they cover.

From April 2026 there is a second reason. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax asks sole traders and landlords above an income threshold to keep digital records and send HMRC a short update every quarter from compatible software. The threshold falls each year, so more people join every April.

A spreadsheet of your statement is a good start, but it is not the end. Each transaction still has to be sorted into business or personal, and business spending into the categories HMRC uses on the return. You can check whether the rules apply to you with the MTD requirement checker, and read what joining involves in Making Tax Digital for sole traders and the quarterly submissions guide.

From spreadsheet to tax return

If the spreadsheet is headed for your tax return, you can skip it. TapTax reads the same PDF statement straight into your records, sorts each transaction into the HMRC category it belongs in, and lets you confirm business or personal with a tap. Statements you have already imported are recognised, so the same transaction is never counted twice. The totals then feed your quarterly update and your tax estimate. See how in bookkeeping in TapTax.

The other half of your records is paperwork. The receipt to CSV converter turns photos of receipts into the same kind of spreadsheet, and the invoice parser reads a supplier invoice into its fields. For what you can claim, the allowable expenses guide covers each category, and receipts and bills in TapTax matches each one to its line on your statement. Every free tool is listed on the tools page.

Privacy

Your statement is sent over an encrypted connection, read, and dropped when the request ends. It is not saved, not added to any account, and nothing it says is written to logs. The spreadsheet is made in your browser from the rows that come back. To count the free pages, the converter keeps only the number of pages converted, against a scrambled key made from your browser and your connection, for 30 days; it cannot be turned back into either. If you are signed in to TapTax, the statement is read into your own account instead, kept for 24 hours so you can import it without reading it twice, and then cleared.