Aplos Bank Reconciliation and Bank Integration, PDF Statements to Aplos Import

Can Aplos import a PDF bank statement?

No. Aplos brings bank activity into a register in three ways: typing it into the register form, pulling it through Bank Integration, or uploading a spreadsheet with the Manual Import tool. None of them opens a PDF. When the only record you have is the statement the bank mails or emails each month, it has to become a spreadsheet before Aplos can use it, and the Manual Import tool is built for exactly that file.

Aplos says as much in its own help center. Its register import article describes the Manual Import tool as a way to bring in data from your bank account or an old system by cleaning it up in a spreadsheet first, and notes that most organizations start by getting the transactions from their bank statement into spreadsheet form. That first step is the slow one when the statement is a PDF. It is the step BankXLSX does for you: upload the PDF, download an Excel file with one row per transaction, and move the columns into the Aplos template.

Bank Integration or Manual Import, which does your church need?

Most churches and nonprofits on Aplos use both. Bank Integration handles the recent weeks once an account is connected. Manual Import covers everything the feed cannot reach. Aplos rebuilt Bank Integration in September 2026, and Plaid is now the only way to connect a bank, so every organization that used the old connection has to link its accounts again.

Four situations put a church treasurer or nonprofit bookkeeper on the Manual Import route. The first is starting Aplos mid-year: the feed reaches back 30 to 90 days, and every month from your opening balance date to that window has to arrive by file. The second is an account at a bank or credit union Plaid does not connect. The third is the reconnect Aplos now requires after the Bank Integration rebuild, which can leave a gap if a login lapses or a bank drops off. The fourth is an audit or a grant report that needs a prior year rebuilt from paper and PDF statements.

How do I import transactions into Aplos?

Go to Fund Accounting, then Transactions, then Registers, and click the Import icon in the top right to open the Manual Import page. Click Download the sample Aplos transaction file. It is an Excel workbook, and it carries your current chart of accounts and your funds on separate tabs, so the names you type into the Account and Fund columns match what Aplos already has.

Fill the template, delete the legend rows at the top, save it, and drag it into the blue upload area on the Manual Import page. Before you import anything, check that the Account Register box shows the right bank account, and change it in the dropdown if it does not. Aplos then lists every row so you can edit it and assign an account and a fund to anything the file left blank.

Make sure the income and expense accounts you need exist in the chart of accounts before you start. A row that names an account Aplos does not have is one more thing to fix on the import screen.

What columns does the Aplos transaction import need?

Three columns are required: Date, Payee and Amount. Everything else is optional, and the Account and Fund columns can be left blank and chosen on the import screen instead. Here is how a converted statement lines up with the template.

Two of those rows cause most failed or messy imports. The Payee column is required, and any name that does not exactly match a contact already in Aplos creates a new contact. Bank descriptions such as ACH DEBIT PAYROLL 0923 SVC would each become a contact of their own. Put a clean, consistent payee name in that column, such as the vendor or the bank, and move the raw bank text into Note/Memo so nothing is lost.

The other is the date. Aplos reads MM/DD/YYYY. If the converted dates arrive as text in another layout, set the Date column in Excel to the custom format mm/dd/yyyy before you copy the rows into the template, and spot check a few rows from the first and last week of the statement.

For amounts, leave Split Debit/Credit off when you convert. You get one signed column, which is exactly the shape the Aplos Amount column expects. If you have already exported separate debit and credit columns, a single formula (credit minus debit) rebuilds it.

How do I split a transaction across funds in the import?

Put the first split on a normal row with the date, memo, payee, check number and the amount for that split. On the next row, enter only the amount, account and fund for the second split, and leave date, memo, payee and check number empty. Add more rows the same way for more splits. A $1,200 utility payment shared between the general fund and a building fund becomes two rows, and each row can carry its own account, fund or tags.

This matters for churches more than for most businesses, because the same bank account usually holds money for the general fund, missions, a building campaign and restricted grants. Splitting in the spreadsheet is faster than splitting line by line after the import.

Should donations go through the register import?

Usually not. Aplos warns that deposits imported straight into the register are not tracked by donor, so they will not appear on contribution statements. If a deposit on the statement is a batch of gifts you need to acknowledge, import those gifts through the Donations area, where each one is tied to a donor and a purpose, and let Aplos create the deposit from there. Use the register import for the rest of the statement: vendor payments, payroll transfers, fees, loan payments and non-gift income.

How do I reconcile a bank account in Aplos?

Open Fund Accounting, then Transactions, then Bank Reconciliation. Pick the register you are reconciling and click Reconcile. Select the statement ending date, enter the statement ending balance, and click Start Reconciliation. Tick every payment and deposit that appears on the statement until the Difference at the bottom of the screen reads 0.00, then click Reconcile.

The opening balance is 0.00 on your first reconciliation and Aplos calculates it for every one after that, so the first reconciliation also needs your starting balances in place. Once finished, Aplos locks the cleared transactions so they cannot be edited unless an administrator reopens the period, which is the control a finance committee or auditor wants to see. Under the Reconciled tab, the Actions button lets you attach the statement to the closed reconciliation, and the Bank Reconciliation Report is under Other Reports.

A converted statement makes the tick-off step quicker because the spreadsheet already lists every line in statement order with the running balance beside it. When the difference will not reach 0.00, sort both lists by amount and the missing line usually shows itself in a minute.

How much does Aplos cost?

The Aplos pricing page lists four tiers. Figures below were read from aplos.com in September 2026. Aplos runs seasonal promo codes for new customers, so the price at checkout can be lower for the first months; the list prices are what you budget against.

Bank reconciliation is on every tier, including Lite, so the statement conversion step matters no matter which plan you run. For the full plan by plan comparison and what a typical church ends up paying, read our Aplos pricing breakdown.

Against those numbers, conversion is a small line item. BankXLSX Starter is $49 a month, or $24 a month billed yearly, for 2,500 pages with unlimited users, enough for a church with an operating account, a building fund account and a credit card many times over. Plus adds bulk upload of up to 50 statements at once, the plan to pick when you are loading a full year of history in one sitting. Plans are on the pricing page.

Starting Aplos mid-year without retyping statements

A treasurer who moves a church from QuickBooks or a spreadsheet to Aplos in the fall usually wants the whole fiscal year in Aplos, so the year-end reports and the audit come from one system. Bank Integration will bring in the last one to three months. The rest is statements.

The routine that works: set your starting balances as of the first day of the fiscal year, convert January through the month before the feed window in one batch, import one file per account per month into the matching register, and reconcile each month in order before moving to the next. Reconciling month by month catches a missed page or a duplicated deposit while it is still one month of activity to search. The catch-up bookkeeping converter covers the same pattern for any ledger, and our guide to categorizing bank transactions for a nonprofit shows how to assign accounts before the rows reach Aplos.

Organizations weighing Aplos against QuickBooks with class tracking face the same PDF problem on either side; the nonprofit bank statement converter page walks through the QuickBooks route.