Guides

Why the balance in your converted bank statement doesn't match

The five usual reasons a PDF-to-Excel conversion of a bank statement comes out with the wrong balance, and how to find the bad row fast.

You converted the statement, summed the columns, and the closing balance is off. It's almost always one of these.

1. A multi-line description became two rows

The bank prints "Misc DR-Debit Card" on one line and the merchant on the next. A generic converter turns that into two rows, one with the amount and one empty, or worse, duplicates the amount. Fix: look for rows with no amount, or consecutive rows with the same amount.

2. A withdrawal landed in the deposit column

When a bank leaves the withdrawal cell blank for a deposit, a column-counting converter shifts everything left. Fix: check a known deposit (salary) and a known withdrawal (a card payment) and see which column each sits in.

3. A foreign-currency line was read as the amount

UOB prints "USD 10.90" above the SGD amount for overseas card transactions. Some tools pick up the 10.90. Fix: search the sheet for currency codes.

4. The page break ate a row

The last transaction on a page and the first on the next can be dropped by tools that re-detect the table on every page. Fix: compare row count to the PDF.

5. The opening balance wasn't captured

Everything reconciles row to row but the total is wrong because the Balance B/F row was skipped. Fix: confirm the first balance in the sheet equals the statement's opening balance.

The fast way

A converter that reconciles each row against the printed balance tells you which row is wrong instead of just that something is. StatementSheet flags any row whose recomputed balance doesn't match the bank's, so the hunt takes seconds.