Converting and importing bank statements into Xero can be easy if you have direct bank feeds or downloads from your bank. But what if you need to handle older transactions or only have them in PDF or scanned formats? Manual entry is time-consuming and not practical for a busy professional.
Datamolino allows you to automate the process, converting your PDF bank statements into CSV (Excel) that you can easily import into your accounting software. This is possible for both electronic PDFs and scanned paper copies of bank statements.
You can read more detail about how Datamolino handles the conversion of bank statements into CSV in our helpdesk.
Why Use Datamolino for bank statements OCR?
- Convenience: Direct bank feeds aren’t always available, and manual data entry from PDF or scanned statements is time-consuming.
- Efficiency: Datamolino automates the conversion of bank statements into a format that’s easily imported into accounting software like Xero, saving valuable time for businesses and accountants.
Steps to Import Bank Statements into Xero Using Datamolino:
1. Upload your bank statements into Datamolino
- In your Datamolino folder navigate to the “bank statements” subfolder. Click import and choose the bank statement PDFs that you need to convert into CSV. Datamolino supports scanned bank statements and electronic PDFs.
- You do not need to specify up-front which bank has issued the statement. Datamolino will work with any bank statement out there.
Navigate to the bank statements subfolder:
Upload bank statement PDFs that you want to process:
2. Datamolino validates the extracted data
Datamolino validates if the debits and credits match the opening and closing balance of the bank statement and validates if all data is correct. If there is an issue with the file the system will let you know.
The system always gives you the transaction data that was captured. The error message will let you know if there was a problem with the original file. It can happen that the original statement PDF was missing pages or some data was not legible.
Get a detailed error message if validation fails:
3. Datamolino automatically extracts all transaction lines from the PDF
Datamolino automatically extracts the bank statement details such as account name, account number and time period of the statement. It also extracts all tabular data from the statement such as transaction date, description, debits and credits.
Your bank statement data is ready for export:
Document detail showing the extracted bank statement:
4. Download the transaction data in CSV format
You can download the captured data in three simple ways:
- Download all data from a single bank statement.
- Filter the data inside a single bank statement and export only the filtered subset of data that you require.
- Merge multiple bank statements into one CSV export and optionally specify the time period to include only relevant date range in the bulk export
One click export of bank statement data:
Filter data by text or date and export only relevant transactions:
Bulk export multiple bank statements into one CSV and choose date range:
5. Import the data into Xero
In Xero the import of CSV file with bank transactions is very straight forward. Click on “Accounting” and choose “Bank accounts” from the menu.
Choose the bank account you want to import your transactions into and click “Manage Account” and “Import a statement”:
Select your file and upload it to Xero for processing. Then click “Next”:
Review the column mapping. Xero typically maps the columns correctly and remembers your mapping between imports. You will see a preview of your data in the next steps:
There is a transaction preview to see if the columns are mapped correctly:
Review and complete the import into Xero. You can always rollback the import if anything goes wrong:
Your data is in Xero and you can reconcile it with your receipts or choose to do cash coding of the transaction lines:
Importing bank statement transactions into Xero is very easy using this method.