Open a lengthy bank statement and you’ll find many more pages than a transaction ledger. Account statements, explanations, and notices and disclosures can be found in the essential information that an accountant needs.
If the objective is to transfer transaction data into a spreadsheet, or an accounting system, all the processing may be a waste of time. A more focused workflow starts by identifying the pages that are useful before creating the output files.
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It’s Not Meant to Mean More Data.
Imagine a business reviewing the financial activity of a few months. While each monthly PDF may have at least ten pages just a small percentage of it will contain the tables required for accounting.
Manually copying those tables is one option, but it’s slow and can lead to mistakes in typing. Businesses can instead convert bank statements to Excel while limiting the conversion to relevant pages.
Docubrew’s page preview lets a user review and decide what data to process. It is possible to remove cover sheets, disclosures, and other pages that you don’t need.
Improve Control by Using Preview first
Automation is most beneficial in situations where the user can observe what’s going on.
Instead of simply processing a document in a blind way, Docubrew lets users preview statements prior to completing the conversion. The program extracts the data directly from the original statement rather than estimating financial figures.
When you convert a bank statement into Excel it gives the user an opportunity to ensure the right pages have been selected and examine the extracted details prior to downloading the final product.
It’s a simple checkpoint, but an important one when financial records are involved.
The destination should determine the Export
The next thing to consider is what you plan to accomplish with the transactions.
Excel can be useful for bookkeepers who need to check the rows, sort information or manipulate the data in a spreadsheet. If the data is going to a different system, CSV may fit the workflow better. Docubrew also allows QBO output.
Someone who requires to convert bank statements to CSV such as, for instance one can create CSV instead of creating a CSV rather than creating an Excel workbook and then manually changing formats afterward.
Docubrew’s output is designed to work with accounting software such as QuickBooks, Xero, and FreshBooks along with spreadsheet-based workflows.
Scanned paper statement statements are able to be integrated into the same workflow
PDFs that are digitally created aren’t the only documents that can be converted.
Certain businesses have only paper copies of older statements. Docubrew supports OCR for scanned statements in PDF format which means that the documents are able to be processed well.
This could be beneficial in the case of historical bookkeeping, where the most recent reports were digitalized while older statements were scanned off paper. Instead of having two different workflows, the files could be processed with the same conversion process and then reviewed prior to export.
Process Locally or Use Cloud
How documents related to finances are handled affects the output as much as the results.
Docubrew’s Windows desktop application runs the conversion locally, and stores client files in the system. The cloud option is for users who wish to process documents via a browser. Docubrew claims that the cloud option deletes the converted and uploaded files within 24 hour.
The last step to convert the bank statement as PDF to Excel is not to feed every page of the document into Excel in hopes of getting a useful output.
Begin by reading the pages with the information you require. Review what’s being extracted. Select the appropriate format to complete the next task in accounting.
A better financial workflow may start not by more processing instead, but by processing less.