Drop in a PDF bank statement and get Clio ready rows: date, description, amount, and running balance. Built for law firms reconciling IOLTA and operating accounts at banks the Plaid feed will not reach. Start free, no credit card.
Last updated September 2026
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Clio Accounting pulls bank transactions through Plaid, and when your bank or account type is not on Plaid the supported fallback is a manual CSV upload under Banking. Clio reads that file in one of two layouts: Date, Description, Amount, or Date, Description, Credit, Debit. It will not read a PDF e-statement. Upload your statement PDFs to BankXLSX and every line comes back as a dated row with description and amount, which is the shape Clio accepts and the shape a trust reconciliation needs. Last updated September 2026.
Clio handles the ledger side well. The friction sits between the bank and Clio, and it is worst on exactly the accounts that get examined.
Clio Accounting connects bank accounts through Plaid, and Clio states plainly that not all banks integrate with the automatic feed. Small community banks and many dedicated trust account products are the ones that fall outside it.
The manual path expects a CSV of transactions downloaded from the bank. A monthly e-statement is a PDF, and pasting it into a spreadsheet gives you one merged column of text rather than dated rows.
Clio accepts two shapes only. Anything else, including a bank export with running balance columns or split debit and credit headings that do not match, is rejected at upload with a list of reasons.
Clio will not let you finish a trust reconciliation until the difference between the ledger and the bank statement is exactly zero. One mistyped amount stops the whole close.
Many bank portals only offer a CSV download for a recent window while the PDF statements go back years. For any period older than that window, the PDF is the only complete source you hold.
When a firm changes bookkeepers, changes platforms, or inherits a matter with an existing trust balance, what actually gets handed over is a stack of statements, not a live connection.
Transaction rows from documents you already hold, in the exact column layout Clio accepts on upload.
The three column shape Clio reads, with money out carried as a negative value the way Clio's own example file does.
Split the amount into separate credit and debit columns when you prefer the four column layout, leaving the unused side blank on each row.
Keep the balance column in your working copy so you can prove the period ties from opening to closing balance before anything is uploaded.
Convert trust and operating accounts separately so nothing gets commingled in a single import file, which is the first thing an auditor looks for.
Convert twelve or thirty six monthly PDFs together and get one continuous date ordered sheet, then split it by reconciliation period.
Nothing connects to your bank, to Plaid, or to Clio. You upload a statement you already have and download a spreadsheet.
The workflow firms use when the bank feed is not available for a trust or operating account.
Upload every monthly PDF for one bank account. They come back as a single sheet in date order with description and amount split into their own columns.
Tip: Do one bank account per file, always.
Keep Date, Description and Amount, or split the amount into Credit and Debit columns. Delete any extra columns, then save as CSV.
Tip: Check totals against the statement closing balance before you save.
In Clio Accounting go to Banking, click Upload transactions, choose the file, and send it to a new or existing bank account. Then run the reconciliation for that period.
Tip: Right after an upload Clio lets you delete the whole batch if something looks wrong.
Firm administrators, legal bookkeepers, and the accountants who sign off on the trust reconciliation.
Reconcile the IOLTA account every month without retyping it, when the trust bank sits outside the Plaid network.
Catch up several months of unreconciled periods across multiple client firms from the statements the firm already holds.
Build opening balances and prior period history that no feed will backfill, working from archived statements.
Produce a transaction level record that ties line by line to the bank statement when a state bar auditor asks for the trust account file.
Yes. Clio Accounting connects bank accounts through Plaid, and Clio states that not all banks integrate with the automatic bank feed. For those institutions the supported route is a manual bank file upload: you download or produce a CSV of transactions, then go to Banking and click Upload transactions. The file can go to a brand new bank account in Clio or to one that already exists. What Clio will not take is a PDF, so the statement has to become rows first.
Clio publishes two accepted layouts and rejects anything else. The three column form is Date, Description, Amount, with money leaving the account carried as a negative number. The four column form is Date, Description, Credit, Debit, where each row fills one side and leaves the other empty. Clio's own sample files use a MM/DD/YYYY date, which is the safest format to write.
| Layout | Columns | Example row | When to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three column | Date, Description, Amount | 01/24/2025, Funds paid out to vendor X, -100.00 | Default. Simplest to produce from a converted statement. |
| Four column | Date, Description, Credit, Debit | 01/26/2025, Funds received from client Y, , 200.00 | When your statement already prints deposits and withdrawals in separate columns. |
Layouts and example rows as published by Clio, checked September 2026.
The four column form trips people up because the empty side still needs its comma. A row with a credit and no debit ends with a trailing comma, and a row with a debit and no credit has two commas together before the amount. Spreadsheet exports handle this correctly on their own, so the safer habit is to build the file in Excel or Sheets and save as CSV rather than editing the text by hand.
These three paths solve different problems and most firms end up using two of them. The live feed is right for the current month on a supported bank. The manual upload covers everything the feed cannot reach. Converting the statement PDF is what makes a manual upload possible at all when the bank portal will not hand you a usable CSV.
| Situation | Plaid bank feed | Converting the statement PDF |
|---|---|---|
| Current month, bank supported by Plaid | Best option, transactions sync automatically | Not needed |
| Bank or account type not on Plaid | Unavailable | Converts the monthly PDF into an uploadable CSV |
| Prior years for a migration into Clio | Out of range | Convert the archived statements in one pass |
| Bank connection expired mid month | Gap until you reconnect | Fills the missing dates from the statement |
| Closed trust account being wound down | Cannot connect | Works from the final statements |
| Evidence for a bar audit | A feed is not the source document | Rows that tie line by line to the statement |
In Clio Manage you open the trust account under Accounts and click Reconcile account. On a first reconciliation you enter both the beginning and ending dates and balances from the bank statement; after that Clio only asks for the ending date and balance. You then match each ledger line against the statement, and Clio will not let you finish until the difference reads zero. Clio also restricts trust reconciliation to administrators and to its current plans, so firms still on a legacy plan will not see the feature.
Firms on Clio Accounting reconcile there instead of in Clio Manage. Operating accounts get a two way reconciliation against the linked ledger accounts, and Clio recommends doing it monthly even where the jurisdiction only requires quarterly, on the sensible grounds that fewer transactions per cycle means errors surface while there is still time to fix them. Either way the reconciliation is only as good as the transaction data behind it, which is why the import step is worth getting right.
Four causes account for most of it. Transactions that predate the bank connection and were never imported. Items recorded in Clio that have not yet cleared the bank, which are legitimate and belong on the uncleared list. Bank fees or interest that appear on the statement but were never booked. And duplicates created when a manual upload overlapped dates the feed had already pulled. Comparing the converted statement line by line against the Clio register finds all four quickly, because both sides are then in the same shape.
Most state bars require more than a bank to book match on a trust account. The standard is a three way reconciliation: the bank balance, the trust book balance, and the sum of every individual client ledger all agree at period end. That third leg is what catches the real problem, which is one client's funds quietly paying another client's costs. It only works when every statement line is in the system with the right date and amount, so the import is not clerical housekeeping, it is the evidence. Our three way trust account reconciliation guide walks the mechanics, and the law firm bank statement converter page covers IOLTA workflows outside Clio.
Once a full year of operating activity is in columns, the work that usually eats January gets shorter. You can total merchant fees, separate owner draws from payroll, isolate filing fees you advanced on behalf of clients, and pull the vendor payments that drive 1099 reporting, all from one sheet instead of three reports. Firms that keep the general ledger in QuickBooks rather than Clio Accounting can move the same rows across as a bank statement to QuickBooks file instead of extracting the statements a second time, and it is worth knowing exactly what the Clio QuickBooks integration does and does not carry across before you rely on it. To code transactions before they reach the ledger, categorize them straight from the converted file.
No. Clio Accounting reads transactions from a Plaid bank feed or from a manually uploaded CSV file. A PDF e-statement has to be converted into transaction rows first, then saved as CSV in one of the two layouts Clio accepts.
Two layouts. Date, Description, Amount, with money out written as a negative number. Or Date, Description, Credit, Debit, where each row fills one column and leaves the other empty. Clio's published examples use MM/DD/YYYY dates.
Clio says outright that banking institutions which do not integrate with Plaid can use bank file uploads to import their transactions. You go to Banking, click Upload transactions, and send the CSV to a new or existing bank account. That is the supported path, not a workaround.
In Clio Accounting go to Banking and click Upload transactions, or Add account then Upload transactions. Choose your CSV, click Continue, then select whether it goes to a new bank account or an existing one and submit. If the file is rejected, Clio lists the reasons before you retry.
Yes. Right after an upload Clio prompts you to review the new transactions and lets you return to the state before the file landed. You can remove specific transactions, or delete the upload and every transaction that came with it.
Only administrators. Clio also limits trust reconciliation to its current plans, so a firm on a legacy plan will not see the feature until it upgrades. If your plan includes Clio Accounting, you reconcile there rather than in Clio Manage.
No. Convert one bank account per file and keep the trust account entirely separate. Mixing accounts into a single import makes a three way reconciliation impossible to prove, and commingled records are the fastest way to fail a bar audit.
Yes. The conversion works from the document rather than from a live connection, so an archived statement from a closed trust account converts exactly like a current one. That is often the only way to document an account that has already been wound down.
Yes, when the statement prints one. Keep it in your working copy to prove the period ties from opening to closing balance, then drop the column before you save the CSV, because Clio only wants the columns in its published layouts.
IOLTA and trust account conversion for firms.
Reconcile trust accounts to the penny.
The wider bookkeeping workflow.
For firms keeping the ledger in QuickBooks.
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