HSBC statement to CSV. Two positive columns folded into one honest sign, dates in ISO.
The single most common UK import failure is not a misread digit — it is a sign. Money Out arrives as a positive number, gets imported as a positive number, and the account gains money it never received. The file written here folds the pair into one signed movement and states which column became which.
Drop a HSBC statement here
Or click to pick the file. It opens in the same page you would have used anyway — the balance chain starts re-adding on the next screen.
Three files free, 60 pages in total, no card needed. Paid plans are priced by the page — one page of the original is one page, up to 500 pages in a single file.
Day-first is only safe if you write it down
If the CSV leaves the dates exactly as printed, every system that reads it has to make the same day-first assumption. Xero can be configured either way; your spreadsheet cannot be configured at all. Writing ISO dates removes the question, and the printed original is kept beside it so nothing is lost in the conversion.
What gets checked before you download
Every line below is arithmetic on the paper you sent — not a supplier's claim about how good its reading is. Where the arithmetic fails, you get the row and the exact difference, and the statement is not called balanced.
Sign reconstructed from the two columns
Money Out becomes a negative movement. The rule used is shown, so it can be checked against the statement rather than trusted.
ISO dates out
No downstream system has to guess whether 03/04 is March or April.
Rows printed vs rows written
Stated together. A page that could not be read is named rather than skipped quietly.
Balance column preserved as printed
The balance carried into the file is the one on the statement, not a recomputed figure. Any disagreement between the two is reported separately.
Where a HSBC statement goes wrong quietly
None of these announce themselves. Each one produces a file that looks correct.
Pence written as a superscript
On some layouts the pence are set smaller or raised. Read as separate characters they corrupt the amount; the cell is flagged when the two parts cannot be joined confidently.
Card transactions with a foreign amount
A line can print both the original currency and the sterling amount. Both are kept; neither is overwritten by the other.
Statements that restart numbering each page
A repeated serial column is page furniture, not an identifier. It does not become a row key in the CSV.
What we will not claim
We do not claim your accounting package will accept the file unexamined. We state the columns and the sign rule so you can check them against what your package expects.
The same goes for the arithmetic: a clean run means the checks we ran found nothing to flag. It does not mean the document is correct — it means nothing in it failed the checks listed above.
How it runs
Upload the statement
A native PDF, a scan, or a phone photo of the HSBC statement. No bank connection, no credentials, nothing to authorise.
The ledger is rebuilt and walked
Rows are put back in the order the statement prints them, page furniture is removed, and the balance chain is re-added line by line.
Check the flags, then export
Anything that did not add up is listed first, with its page and exact difference. Then take the CSV file, the other export shapes, and the review sheet.
What lands on your disk
- The .XLSX register — one row per transaction, no merged cells, amounts as numbers
- A Review sheet: who confirmed or corrected which cell, and what it said before
- Plain CSV, Xero-shaped CSV, and QuickBooks .QBO with unique transaction IDs
- A check report stating the rows printed, the rows exported, and every difference found
- Every cell still clickable back to the page and region it was read from
- Files are read, then destroyed — a second upload is a second read
Questions
Is this suitable for Xero's statement import?+
There is a Xero-shaped CSV: Date, Description, Debit, Credit, Balance, with a signed amount available instead. It is one of four exports from the same upload, alongside plain CSV, .XLSX and QuickBooks .QBO.
What happens to transactions the reader is unsure about?+
They stay in the file, flagged, with the reading that was taken and the reason. Removing them would make the file shorter than the statement; correcting them would be us editing your client's records.
Can I check a month against the next one?+
Yes. Upload consecutive statements and the closing balance of one is compared with the opening of the next; a gap is reported as a gap.
What does it cost?+
Three files are free, 60 pages in total, with no card and no account needed to try. Paid plans are sold by the page — $19 a month buys 1,000 pages — and a page is one page of the original document.
For the working paper you have to be able to defend.
The same checks, without naming a bank — including the ones whose layouts we do not recognise.
A .QBO with the institution, the account and a transaction ID per row, so a re-import is refused.