Convert PNC Statements to Excel and CSV

Why a PNC statement is hard to convert

The amounts carry no minus sign. A rent payment and a paycheck look the same in the amount column, and only the group they sit in tells you which way the money moved. A tool that reads each line alone returns a sheet where spending adds to income.

There are many outflow groups, and their names are long. Debit card purchases, online payments and other deductions each have their own heading. If a converter knows only the word withdrawals, it treats the rest as deposits, and your totals come out too high.

The year is not on every row. Rows show a short date, and the period at the top of the statement supplies the missing year. A converter that ignores the header returns dates that Excel interprets as the current year.

Card purchases often carry long reference text. The merchant name, a city and an authorization code can wrap across two lines, and the second line is easy to mistake for a new transaction.

About PNC statements

• PNC makes statements available as PDFs in online banking, and customers can also request paper copies by mail. Paper copies are often scanned for storage.
• Personal and business checking accounts use similar statements, though business accounts tend to have more rows and more checks.
• People most often need them for bookkeeping, for a tax preparer, or for proof of income and spending when applying for credit.

How we convert it

• Money in is positive. Debit card purchases, online and electronic deductions and other deductions are negative.
• Dates are returned with the full year.
• The second line of a wrapped description is not counted as a separate transaction.
• Scanned pages are read with OCR, and sideways pages are turned upright.

Every conversion also checks each page against the page image, and lines that continue a wrapped description are not counted as extra transactions.

The result is a CSV with Date, Description and Amount columns (plus Balance when the statement has one) that opens in Excel and imports into Google Sheets and QuickBooks. You pay per transaction, not per page. See plans and pricing.

What people do with the file

Spending review. Sort the CSV by description and group the debit card purchases by merchant to see where the month went. A pivot table does it in a few clicks, since every outflow is already negative.

Sending records to a tax preparer. One sheet with a full date on each row is easier to hand over than a stack of monthly PDFs, and the preparer can filter it for deductible items.

Monthly bookkeeping for a small shop. Convert each statement as it arrives, append the rows to a running workbook, and import the same file into your accounting software.

Good to know

• Scans can contain OCR digit errors. Compare totals with the statement.
• PNC credit card, mortgage and brokerage statements are laid out differently and are not covered by this page.

Questions