What people use the spreadsheet for

Catch-up bookkeeping: categorize a year of transactions in a column next to the amounts, then total by category with a pivot table.
Loan and lease applications: lenders often want average balances and deposit totals for the last few months.
Tax preparation: filter on a payee to total charitable gifts, estimated tax payments or business expenses paid from a personal account.
Reconciliation: compare the statement with the ledger in the bank reconciliation tool, or with your own records side by side.
Disputes and audits: find every charge from one merchant across many months in seconds.

How the statement is read

The PDF's text is rebuilt into lines and columns. Lines that start with a date become transactions; the lines below that continue a description are joined to it. Withdrawal and deposit columns are combined into one signed amount, and the running balance, when the statement has one, is used to confirm each amount and its sign. The opening and closing balances printed on the statement are then compared with the transactions.

Working with the result in Excel

Add a Category column and use Insert > PivotTable to total spending by category and month.
Use SUMIF with a wildcard, such as =SUMIF(B:B,"*PAYROLL*",E:E) with E being the Amount column, to total transactions whose description contains a word.
Keep the Summary sheet: it documents the period and balances you started from.

Need a different format?

The same screen can download a CSV, a QuickBooks file (QBO), a Quicken file (QFX) or an OFX file, so you can keep a spreadsheet copy and import the transactions from the same review.

Frequently asked questions

Why not copy and paste from the PDF?

Pasting from a PDF puts each line in one cell, splits descriptions across rows, and turns amounts into text that won't add up. The converter rebuilds the table, joins wrapped descriptions and writes dates and amounts as real values, so formulas and pivot tables work straight away.

What's in the workbook?

A Transactions sheet with the date, description, separate Debit and Credit columns, a signed Amount column, and the memo, check number and running balance when the statement has them. Amounts use an accounting format, the header row is frozen and filters are on. A Summary sheet lists the account, the period, the number of transactions, money in, money out, net change, and the opening and closing balances.

Are withdrawals negative?

In the Amount column, yes: money out is negative and money in positive, so a SUM gives the net change. The Debit and Credit columns repeat the same amounts as positive numbers for people who prefer two columns.

Can I convert a year of statements into one workbook?

On Pro and Business, drop all twelve PDFs together and choose Combine into one file. Statements are put in date order, and the balances are kept when each month starts where the previous one ended.