The advancement of technology in banking has made bookkeeping simpler, but those who deal with financial records realize that it’s not perfect. In the case of feeds from banks, transactions may not be accessible, and clients still send statements in PDF format. It is then necessary to transform a PDF document designed to be read into a format that accounting software will actually use.
A converter for bank statements will reduce the amount of repetitive work that is involved in this process. Docubrew will convert the information of your bank statement into structured spreadsheet information.
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When a PDF is the missing piece
Imagine a bookkeeper making the year-end reconciliation for an incoming customer. The accounting platform has recent transactions, but some of the older months are missing. Fortunately clients have downloaded the original PDF reports.
Traditionally, rebuilding the previous months can take long hours of copying numbers into the spreadsheet. The PDF bank statement to Excel workflow is a practical alternative. Docubrew extracts transaction data from scanned paper bills or PDFs that are digital.
For professionals who regularly need to move a bank statement to Excel, reducing manual transcription eliminates the potential for mistakes in typing.
Keep the Pages That Actually are Counting
Statements of bank accounts aren’t made up entirely of transactions. A 12-page report could contain a cover page, account summary and disclosures or notices along with a number of pages of transactions at the bank.
Docubrew lets users preview the document and then select the appropriate pages prior to conversion. That makes it easier to convert bank statements into Excel without bringing unrelated statement data into the working dataset.
After the file is processed, it can be opened in Excel or integrated into accounting platforms such as QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks etc.
CSV offers a flexible accounting workflow
CSV remains useful because it is widely supported by spreadsheets, databases as well as accounting applications. Docubrew can convert bank statements into CSV by referring to the table of transactions.
The same workflow can help firms convert bank statement to CSV when reconstructing historical books, handling a new-client cleanup project, investigating missing transactions, or preparing data for reconciliation.
Accounting firms that have to handle multiple client statements or clients at the same time can benefit by batch processing.
Financial documents require careful privacy protections
When processing financial records convenience is not the only factor to be considered. Bank statements can contain sensitive client data Bookkeepers and accountants might also be concerned about the location where processing occurs.
Docubrew offers two options. Its Windows desktop application runs documents locally on the user’s computer and therefore the data isn’t being uploaded to convert them. The encrypted cloud version is available for users who prefer working with browsers. Files uploaded are removed automatically after 24 hours.
The platform can be anything from Excel software to bank statements that depend solely on remote processing.
Turning Document Archives Back Into Working Data
While PDF statements can be excellent records, they’re difficult to use when transactions need to be sorted or reconciled. They are also not able to be used to import, filter, or re-organize, etc. Scanned documents add an extra complication, as the details of transactions are usually only accessible in images.
Docubrew is a combination of statement parsing and OCR support for scanned documents providing bookkeepers, accountants, and businesses a practical way to convert financial documents that are archived into usable transaction data.
The result is an easy improvement to an otherwise monotonous routine: preserve the bank statement as a primary financial record, while transforming its transaction table into data you can actually use.