Drake Accounting Bank Statement Converter: PDF to CSV for Bank Reconciliation and Bank Import

Can Drake Accounting import a PDF bank statement?

No. Drake Accounting imports bank transactions from a .CSV file and nothing else, and Drake says so in its own knowledge base article on importing bank reconciliation transactions. A PDF statement has to be turned into rows first. Once it is a CSV with a date, a description and the amounts, Drake lets you map whatever column headers the file has to its own fields on screen, so the file does not need to follow a fixed template.

That flexibility is what makes a converted statement work. Drake publishes blank templates for most spreadsheet imports, including employees, vendors, customers and journal entries, and those have to match the template layout exactly. Bank Import is the exception: there is no blank template, and Drake tells you to use any spreadsheet, such as one exported from the bank, and match the columns during the import.

What CSV format does Drake Accounting accept for bank import?

Any CSV that carries the five fields Drake maps. On the import screen each field has a drop-down listing the headers found in your file, and you pick the one that matches. Drake's own example uses separate deposit and withdrawal columns with positive amounts and dates written month, day, year, which is the shape the converter produces.

Two small habits prevent most failed imports. Strip the dollar signs and thousands separators from the amount columns, and delete the summary lines a statement prints at the bottom of each page, such as totals and daily balance tables. The converter already leaves those out, because it reads transactions rather than every line of text on the page.

Bank Reconciliation import or Spreadsheet Bank Import?

Drake gives you two places to bring the same CSV in, and they do different jobs. Practices doing full write-up usually use both, in this order: create the transactions, then reconcile the period against the statement.

How do I do a bank reconciliation in Drake Accounting?

Go to Accounting > Bank Reconciliation, pick the account, enter the statement date, the starting balance (last month's ending balance) and the ending balance, then click Load Trans. Journal entries fill the Book Report on the left. Click Import Bank to bring in the statement CSV, match book lines to bank lines with the arrow buttons, and click Finish once both sides balance. Drake then opens a reconciliation report you can save or print.

Only postable current asset accounts, and current liability accounts with a credit card sub-type, appear in the account list, so a card account reconciles the same way as a checking account. Bank-initiated items that were never booked, like interest, service charges and penalties, go in through the Journal Entry button, and Drake requires each manual entry to carry an offsetting entry. If you need to stop before the reconciliation balances, Drake offers Save Partial so the work is not lost.

Why is my Drake Accounting bank reconciliation not balancing?

Drake points to two causes first: a missing or wrong Starting Balance or Ending Balance, and bank transactions that were never entered in Drake Accounting. In practice the second one is usually a handful of fees, interest credits or card settlements the client never mentioned. Laying the converted statement next to the Book Report finds them quickly because both sides are dated rows. The third common cause is a transaction that predates the 13 month look-back from the statement date, which Drake will not pull into the reconciliation at all.

Catch-up clients and the 13 month limit

A new write-up client with two years of unreconciled statements is where retyping gets expensive. Because Drake only reaches back 13 months from each statement date, and will not reconcile the same account and statement date twice, the work has to run in order, oldest period first, with each period proven before you click Finish. Converting the whole stack of PDFs up front gives you every period ready as its own CSV, so the time goes into reviewing and matching rather than typing. Our catch-up bookkeeping from bank statements page covers ordering and period checks in more depth, and categorizing the transactions before import saves a second pass when you assign accounts.

What does this cost a Drake practice?

Drake Accounting itself is sold per year: the Professional edition, which includes bank reconciliation, AP and AR and payroll, is listed at $795 a year with unlimited clients, and the Forms edition for payroll forms and e-filing is $395 a year. BankXLSX is priced by pages converted. The Starter plan is $49 a month, or $24 a month billed yearly, and the Plus plan at $149 a month, or $74 billed yearly, adds bulk upload of up to 50 files at once, which is the plan practices pick in January when every client sends a year of statements together. A new account can convert up to 15 pages once, with no card, to test it on a real client statement first.

The comparison that matters is against staff time. A single business checking statement with 80 transactions is a long sitting to key and check by hand. Converted, it is a review. Practices weighing whether to keep client books in Drake at all or move them to QuickBooks will find the trade-offs laid out in Drake Accounting vs QuickBooks for tax preparers, and the wider tax-season workflow is on the bank statement converter for tax preparers page.