A bookkeeper's checklist for validating converted statement data

Converted statement data should be audited like any other third-party work product: quickly, systematically, and before it enters the ledger. This is the ten-point checklist we would want any bookkeeper to run on output from any converter, including ours.

The checklist

1. Closing balance equation. Opening balance plus total money in minus total money out equals the printed closing balance, to the penny. If this fails, stop here and find the break.
2. Running-balance transitions. Where the statement prints per-row balances, each one follows from the previous plus that row's amount. This localises any error to a row.
3. Row count. Count transactions on the PDF's first and last pages and compare with the file, remembering brought-forward and carried-forward markers are not transactions.
4. First and last rows verbatim. Compare date, description, amount, and balance of the first and final transaction character by character against the PDF. Boundary rows are where extraction fails first.
5. Direction spot check. Pick two debits and two credits from the PDF and confirm they landed on the correct side with the correct sign.
6. Date sanity. Dates fall inside the statement period, in order (or grouped by day), with special attention to statements spanning a year boundary: does 3 January carry the right year?
7. Ambiguous-date probe. Find a date with day greater than 12 (like 25/03) and confirm it did not survive a US-format round trip. If every date in the file has day 12 or lower, be extra suspicious; you cannot tell.
8. Duplicate scan. Sort by amount and look for repeated date-amount-description triples. Legitimate duplicates exist (two identical coffees), so check suspects against the PDF rather than deleting.
9. Amount formatting. No currency symbols, no thousands separators, no amounts stored as text (in Excel: does SUM over the column equal the sum you expect?).
10. Wrapped-description integrity. Find a long payee on the PDF that wraps onto two lines and confirm it arrived as one row, complete, with its amount attached.

Making it fast

Points 1 and 2 are automated by any converter that verifies its own output, and by the free statement balance checker for files from anywhere else. The rest take under five minutes with the PDF open beside the sheet, which is exactly how the review screen here is laid out: rows on one side, the source page with the matching region highlighted on the other.

Keep the evidence

Note what you checked and when, alongside the file. If the data is ever questioned, a one-line record ("reconciled to closing balance, transitions clean, rows 1 and 214 verified against PDF, 15 July 2026") turns a difficult conversation into a short one.

Reviewed 15 July 2026.