Creating Searchable Financial Records From Old PDF Statements

Banking technology has automated much of the bookkeeping however, anyone who deals with financial records understands that automation isn’t perfect. Feeds from banks stop working, and historical transactions might not be available and customers still send statements in PDF. If this happens, someone must convert a document that is designed to read data into one that accounting software could actually utilize.

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The use of a statement converter can decrease the quantity of repetitive work that is required. Docubrew will convert the information from your bank statements into structured spreadsheet data.

When a PDF Becomes the Missing Piece

Imagine a bookkeeper is preparing an annual reconciliation for an unnamed client. The accounting platform contains latest transactions, however, a number of older years aren’t included. Fortunately that the client downloaded the original PDF statements.

Traditionally, rebuilding those months could involve the time of copying figures onto an Excel spreadsheet. A PDF bank statement that is converted to Excel workflow is an effective alternative. Docubrew collects data about transactions from scanned paper bills or PDFs that are digital.

For professionals who regularly need to move a bank statement to Excel, reducing manual transcription also removes an unnecessary opportunity for typing errors.

Be sure to keep the pages that Actually Are Counting

Bank statements aren’t made up of only transactions. A 12-page report could contain an introduction page, a account summary, disclosures or other notices as well as a variety of pages of actual transactions in the bank.

Docubrew offers users the ability to preview a document and choose the relevant pages to convert. It is easier to convert bank statement accounts to Excel because the irrelevant contents of the statement are not included in the working data.

The resultant file can be used by accounting platforms such as QuickBooks, Xero and FreshBooks.

CSV offers a flexible accounting Workflow

CSV is still a useful format and is widely used by databases and spreadsheets. Accounting applications can also use CSV. Docubrew will convert your bank statements to CSV by using the transaction tables included within the report.

This same workflow is utilized to convert bank statements into CSV to serve a variety of uses, including the reconstruction of the past, starting the task of cleaning up the client database that is not being used, analyzing missing transactions, or even preparing the data to be used in reconciliation.

Accounting firms that must deal with many clients or statements can use batch processing to their advantage.

Financial Documents – Financial Records – Should be Considering Privacy Controls

Processing financial records is not just about ease of use. Bank statements may contain sensitive information about clients Bookkeepers and accountants might also be concerned about the place where they process.

Docubrew provides two approaches. Its Windows desktop software processes files locally on the user’s personal computer thus the files aren’t uploaded for conversion. The encrypted cloud version is accessible to those who prefer working with browsers. Uploads are erased automatically within 24 hours.

This distinction is what differentiates Excel software, which relies solely on remote processing from the platform for bank statements.

Turning Document Archives Back Into Working Data

Although PDF statements make excellent records, they are inconvenient to use when transactions need to be sorted or reconciled. They are also not able to be imported, filtered, re-organized or re-organized. Scanned documents can be problematic since transaction data might only exist in the form of an image.

Docubrew is a powerful application that combines OCR and statement parsing to turn scans of documents into useful financial information. This provides accountants bookkeepers, and business owners a way to convert financial records that are archival into valuable transactional data.

This simple remedy can help speed up an inefficient workflow by preserving the original bank statement, while the transaction table is converted to the information you need to use.