Term
Bank Statement
A bank statement is an official record of account activity over a period of time. It usually includes deposits, withdrawals, transfers, fees, opening balances, closing balances, and transaction descriptions.
Bank Statement Converter helps turn statement PDFs into structured spreadsheet data so finance teams can review, reconcile, and share the transaction rows without manual retyping.
Term
PDF is a fixed-layout document format. Banks use it because statements look consistent across devices and operating systems.
That same fixed layout makes PDFs awkward for analysis. Data that looks like a table on the page may not be stored as spreadsheet rows, so extraction is needed before the data can be sorted, filtered, or imported.
Term
CSV
CSV stands for Comma-Separated Values. It is a plain-text format for rows and columns, with each field separated by a comma.
CSV is useful for bank statement exports because it opens in Excel, Google Sheets, databases, and many accounting tools. It is simple, portable, and easy to inspect.
Term
Excel Spreadsheet
An Excel spreadsheet is a workbook format used for financial review, formulas, filtering, pivot tables, and shared analysis.
When statement data is extracted into Excel-style rows, users can compare balances, group merchants, check totals, and prepare cleaner files for accountants or operations teams.
Term
Google Sheets-Friendly Export
A Google Sheets-friendly export is spreadsheet data prepared so it can be pasted into or imported by Google Sheets with predictable rows and columns.
This is useful for teams that collaborate in the browser, share review sheets, or maintain lightweight finance trackers without desktop spreadsheet software.
Term
OCR
OCR means Optical Character Recognition. It converts text shown in an image, scan, or photographed document into machine-readable text.
OCR matters for scanned bank statements because the visible transaction table may only exist as pixels. OCR helps recover the text before the system can structure it into table rows.
Term
Table Extraction
Table extraction is the process of detecting rows, columns, headers, and cell values from a document layout.
For statement conversion, table extraction is what turns a visual transaction list into usable data with columns such as date, description, debit, credit, amount, and balance.
Term
Debit and Credit
A debit is money leaving an account. A credit is money entering an account. Statement layouts may use separate debit and credit columns, a single signed amount column, or labels such as withdrawal and deposit.
Keeping this direction clear is important for reconciliation, cash-flow review, and imports into accounting workflows.
Term
Running Balance
A running balance is the account balance after each transaction. Some statements show it on every row, while others only show opening and closing balances.
When present, running balance can help users check whether extracted rows are complete and ordered correctly.
Term
Bank Reconciliation
Bank reconciliation is the process of comparing bank statement activity with internal records, invoices, accounting ledgers, or payment systems.
Clean spreadsheet exports make reconciliation faster because transactions can be sorted, matched, filtered, and reviewed in a structured workflow.
Term
Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping is the regular recording and organization of financial transactions for a business or individual.
Bookkeepers often receive statements as PDFs. Converting those PDFs into spreadsheet rows reduces manual entry and makes month-end review easier.
Term
API Key
An API key is a secret token used by software to authenticate requests. It should be stored server-side and never exposed in public frontend code.
Bank Statement Converter subscription users can create API keys for automated statement conversion workflows outside the dashboard.
Term
Data Retention
Data retention describes how long conversion records and related usage data are kept.
Short retention windows are useful for sensitive financial documents because they reduce the time that converted outputs remain available after processing.
Term
OFX and QFX
OFX and QFX are financial data exchange formats used by some accounting and personal finance tools. They are more specialized than CSV because they include transaction metadata intended for finance software imports.
OFX stands for Open Financial Exchange. QFX is a Quicken-focused variant of OFX used by Quicken and related personal finance workflows.
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