Cash is the account you test hardest and the one that arrives as a stack of PDFs. Upload the client statements and BankXLSX returns every transaction as a sortable row with date, description, debit, credit, and running balance, ready to foot, sample, and tie to the general ledger. Start free, no credit card.
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Cash is high risk, easy to misstate, and almost always delivered as client-prepared PDFs. The evidence is right there in the statement, but getting it into a workpaper you can actually test is where the hours disappear.
A full year for one operating account is twelve separate files, and a client with five accounts hands you sixty PDFs before you have tested anything.
Keying deposits into a workpaper by hand is slow and puts a transcription risk inside the very procedure meant to detect misstatement.
Recalculating that opening balance plus receipts minus disbursements equals the closing balance requires the numbers in cells, not in a locked page image.
Selecting disbursements above a threshold or picking a random sample means you first need the whole population in one sortable list.
Checking deposits in transit and outstanding checks around year end means working across the December and January statements at the same time.
Clients who scan paper statements or print to image send files where copy and paste returns nothing at all.
Upload the statements once and the converter reads every page into structured rows you can test, tick, and cross reference against the ledger.
Date, description, check number where present, debit, credit, and running balance land in separate columns so the population is complete and sortable.
The balance column carries through, so you can foot the account and prove that opening plus receipts less disbursements equals closing.
Convert twelve statements and stack them into one continuous sheet, which is what a proof of cash and a cutoff test both need.
OCR handles image only PDFs, so a client scan of a paper statement still produces text you can test.
Sort by amount to isolate disbursements above your scope threshold, or filter by description to pull related party and round dollar items.
256-bit encryption in transit and you can delete uploaded files whenever the engagement is done.
No install, no IT ticket, no credit card to start.
Gather every monthly statement for the period under audit, plus the month after year end for cutoff testing.
Tip: Ask for all pages, not just page one.
Drag the PDFs into the box above. Text based and scanned statements both work, and multiple accounts can be converted in the same session.
Tip: Convert one account at a time to keep the workpaper clean.
Download the XLSX, stack the months, foot the balance, and run your sampling and cutoff procedures against the full population.
Tip: Keep the source PDF with the workpaper as support.
The converted sheet is the input to several standard cash procedures. It is the data prep step, not the audit judgment.
Build a proof of cash and test cutoff for each significant account without keying a year of activity by hand.
Scan a full period of disbursements for duplicate payments, round dollar amounts, and vendors outside the approved list.
Trace restricted grant receipts and program disbursements from the statement to the ledger and back.
Sort and pivot several years of activity to isolate patterns a page by page read would never surface.
The statement itself is evidence. What a converter changes is how fast you can test it. Once every transaction is a row, the standard cash procedures become spreadsheet work rather than data entry: foot the account, agree the closing balance to the reconciliation, sample disbursements, test cutoff around period end, and scan the population for anything that does not belong. Below is how each of those procedures uses the converted file.
| Procedure | What you need from the statement | Why the PDF slows it down |
|---|---|---|
| Proof of cash | Opening balance, total receipts, total disbursements, closing balance, for every month | Totals must be recalculated, not read off the page, so the numbers have to be in cells. |
| Cutoff testing | Transactions either side of period end, from two consecutive statements | Two separate PDFs have to be read side by side instead of filtered by date in one sheet. |
| Disbursement sampling | The complete population of payments with amounts | You cannot sort a PDF by amount or apply a scope threshold to it. |
| Search for unrecorded items | Every line item, including fees and small transfers | Small items are easy to skip when reading page by page and easy to catch when filtering. |
| Analytical review | Monthly deposit and disbursement totals across the period | Trend analysis needs a time series, which means the months must be stacked in one sheet. |
A client provided bank statement is evidence, but it is weaker than evidence you obtain directly from the bank, because the client controls it. Under AU-C section 505, external confirmation sent directly to the bank and returned directly to you is the higher quality procedure, and the AICPA Auditing Standards Board has proposed tightening the documentation expected when an auditor chooses not to confirm. Where inherent and control risk over the existence of cash is assessed as low, inspecting client provided statements can be an appropriate substantive procedure. Converting the statement does not change its evidential status. It changes how thoroughly you can test whatever evidence you have, and it makes an obtained-direct statement just as testable as a client copy.
A proof of cash reconciles four columns for each month: the beginning balance, receipts, disbursements, and the ending balance, agreeing the bank side to the book side across all four rather than just at the period end balance. That is why it catches things a straight bank reconciliation misses, such as a deposit recorded twice or a disbursement recorded in the wrong period. Once your statements are stacked in one sheet you can total receipts and disbursements per month with a pivot table in a couple of minutes. The proof of cash template for Excel walks through the format, the formula, and a worked example.
Two practical points save time on larger engagements. First, request statements for one month past the period end at the same time you request the audit period, because cutoff testing needs them and going back to the client twice costs more than the extra conversion. Second, if the client has many accounts, convert the operating account first and see what the transaction volume looks like before committing an approach for the rest. High volume accounts often justify pulling a bank file instead of the PDF, and most US commercial banks will provide a BAI2 balance reporting file or an OFX file on request, both of which convert cleanly and remove any OCR question entirely.
Cash testing sits next to several adjacent tasks. To prepare a client file for a specific audit request, the guide on how to convert a bank statement for audit covers the mechanics. Engagements involving cash businesses should read what triggers a cash intensive business audit. Fraud work and litigation support start from forensic accounting bank statement analysis, and law firm engagements from three way trust account reconciliation. If you need the running balance specifically, see running balance extraction, and to stack a full year use combine bank statements in Excel. Firms processing many clients at once should look at batch bank statement conversion, and the general bank statement converter handles any format from a single upload. Tax and accounting staff on the same file often start from the bank statement CSV workflow for CPAs.
Cash is rarely the only account with a pile of PDFs behind it. Vendor files and accounts payable testing move faster when the invoices are read automatically with AI invoice data extraction, larger firms standardize the whole document intake step with enterprise document OCR, and once the tested numbers are agreed, presenting them as clean statements is easier with an automated financial statement generator.
Auditors verify cash primarily through external confirmation, sending a request directly to the bank and receiving the reply directly, under AU-C section 505. That is supported by inspecting the bank statements and reconciliations, footing the activity, testing cutoff around period end, and sampling significant deposits and disbursements against underlying support.
A client provided bank statement is evidence, but it is lower quality than a statement obtained directly from the bank because the client controls it. Where inherent and control risk over the existence of cash is low, inspecting client provided statements can be an appropriate substantive procedure, and the auditor documents that judgment.
The core procedures are confirming the balance with the bank, agreeing the confirmed balance to the client bank reconciliation, footing and recalculating the reconciliation, testing reconciling items such as deposits in transit and outstanding checks, testing cutoff either side of period end, and scanning the full transaction population for unusual items.
A proof of cash reconciles the bank and the books across four columns for each period: beginning balance, receipts, disbursements, and ending balance. Because it agrees the activity and not just the ending balance, it detects errors a standard bank reconciliation can hide, such as an offsetting overstatement of both receipts and disbursements.
Yes. Scanned or image only PDFs are processed with OCR, so a client copy of a paper statement still produces text rows. Review the converted totals against the statement summary before relying on them, which is good practice for any converted evidence regardless of the source.
Request every month in the audit period plus at least the first month after period end. The subsequent month is what cutoff testing uses to check deposits in transit cleared and outstanding checks were presented, and asking for it upfront avoids a second client request later in the engagement.
No. Conversion is a data preparation step that reformats the same information into rows. The evidential quality still depends on the source, meaning whether the statement came directly from the bank or from the client. Keep the original PDF filed with the workpaper as support for the converted sheet.
Usually yes for business accounts. Most US commercial banks provide BAI2 balance reporting files or OFX downloads through cash management portals. Those formats carry structured transaction data with no OCR step, which makes them the cleaner input for high volume accounts when the client can obtain them.
Build the four column proof of cash.
Trace activity for fraud and litigation work.
Prepare borrower statements for underwriting.
Client statement prep for accounting firms.
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