How LedgerClip reads a bank statement

A bank statement PDF is not a picture. It is a list of text fragments, each with a position on the page. LedgerClip uses those positions to rebuild the transaction table — and it does it all in your browser.

1. 1Read the text layer. The PDF is opened in your browser with the same engine Firefox uses. Every word comes back with its coordinates. A scan or photo has no text layer, so it is read with on-device OCR instead.
2. 2Rebuild the rows. Fragments that share a baseline are one printed line. Lines that begin with a date are transactions; lines under them without a date are wrapped descriptions.
3. 3Find the columns. The header row — Date, Description, Withdrawals, Deposits, Balance and their many synonyms — tells LedgerClip which column each number sits in. Numbers are matched by their right edge because banks right-align money.
4. 4Decide the sign. A deposit column makes an amount positive and a withdrawal column negative. When the statement prints a running balance, the change in balance is used instead, because it is never ambiguous.
5. 5Reconcile. Opening balance plus every amount should equal the closing balance. If it does not, you are told before you export — never handed wrong numbers dressed up as right.
6. 6Write the file. CSV and Excel keep amounts numeric. QBO and OFX follow the format QuickBooks and Quicken import, including a registered bank ID and a stable ID per transaction so re-imports do not create duplicates.

Scans and photos

A scanned PDF or a phone photo has no text layer, so LedgerClip reads it with OCR that runs entirely on your device, then rebuilds the same table and checks that the totals reconcile. Clean scans and straight, well-lit photos come out right; a blurry or low-resolution one may not reconcile, in which case LedgerClip tells you rather than handing you wrong numbers. For the most reliable result, use the PDF you download from online banking.

Finding your bank's QuickBooks ID

QuickBooks only imports .qbo files that name an institution it knows. LedgerClip ships with known IDs for major banks and a default that QuickBooks accepts for any account. If you have a .qbo file your bank produced, open it in a text editor and copy the number after INTU.BID; you can enter it when exporting.

Updated September 2026.