How to convert a PDF bank statement to CSV

CSV is the lingua franca of accounting imports, and also the format with the most silent ways to go wrong. This guide covers producing a statement CSV that imports cleanly into UK accounting software the first time.

What a good statement CSV looks like

• UTF-8 with a byte order mark (BOM) if the file will ever be opened in Excel on Windows; without the BOM, £ signs and accented payee names turn to mojibake.
• RFC 4180 quoting: any field containing a comma, quote, or line break is wrapped in double quotes, with internal quotes doubled. Payee descriptions contain commas constantly.
• One explicit date format. UK software mostly expects DD/MM/YYYY; ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) is safest for anything else. Never let a tool guess.
• Signed amounts or paired columns, never both mixed. Xero and FreeAgent expect a single signed Amount column (money in positive, money out negative). Generic ledgers often prefer separate Money out and Money in columns. Know which your target wants before you export.
• Plain decimal amounts: 1234.56, no currency symbols, no thousands separators.

The formula injection trap

A malicious or merely unlucky payee description that starts with =, +, -, or @ will execute as a formula when the CSV opens in Excel. A safe converter neutralises these by prefixing a quote character. If you build CSVs by hand, do the same; it has been used as a real attack vector against finance teams.

Producing the file

The converter exports three CSV presets, generated locally in your browser: generic accounting (Date, Description, Money out, Money in, Amount, Balance), a Xero import layout, and a FreeAgent import layout, each with UK or ISO dates and optional BOM. Whatever you use, open the result in a text editor once, not just Excel, and look at the raw first three lines; most encoding and quoting problems are visible immediately.

Verify before importing

A CSV that parses is not a CSV that is right. Check that opening balance plus credits minus debits equals the closing balance, and spot-check the first and last transaction against the PDF. The reconciliation guide covers the full procedure, and the accounting CSV validator checks encoding, headers, dates, and duplicates locally without uploading anything.

Reviewed 15 July 2026. Not accounting advice.