How to import your bank statement (OFX, CSV or PDF) and type nothing

If there's a single reason people abandon money tracking, it's typing. No one can stand entering 80 transactions by hand every month. The good news: you don't have to. Practically every bank exports the statement, and a good app imports and organizes it for you.

This guide explains the formats, what reconciliation is, and how to do it without creating duplicate entries.

The three statement formats

• OFX — the "native" finance format. It's the best: each transaction comes with a unique identifier (the FITID), which prevents duplication and makes reconciliation easy. Almost every bank and card offers "export OFX".
• CSV — a simple table (date, description, amount). It works well, but each bank uses a different layout; a good importer detects the columns, the separator and the number format (1,234.56) on its own.
• PDF — the "to read" statement. It's the hardest to process, but with AI reading you can extract the transactions from a statement or invoice PDF and turn them into entries.

What reconciliation is (and why it prevents duplicates)

Reconciling means matching what the bank says with what you already logged. Without it, re-importing the statement would create everything again, doubling your spending.

An importer that reconciles well does this for each statement line:

• If a matching entry already exists (same amount and a nearby date), it matches it — no duplicate.
• If it doesn't exist, it offers to create it.
• If it's a transfer between your own accounts (e.g. a card statement payment), it recognizes both sides and doesn't count it as a duplicate expense/income.

The technical secret is using that unique OFX identifier (or a "fingerprint" of the CSV/PDF line): re-importing the same file never duplicates.

Step by step to import painlessly

1. Export the statement from your online banking (look for "export OFX" or "CSV statement"). For a card, export the invoice.
2. Choose the account in the app and upload the file.
3. Review the preview: each line comes marked new, matched or ambiguous, with a suggested category (learned from your history).
4. Adjust what you want (category, ignore a line, mark it as a transfer to the card) and confirm.
5. Done — months of data organized, with the balance matching the bank's.

Automatic categorization

Beyond importing, a good app suggests the category for each transaction based on what you've categorized before (groceries, transport, subscriptions). With AI, it can even propose new categories when a type of spending shows up that you didn't have yet — created only if you confirm.

How Pralut does it

Pralut imports OFX, CSV and PDF, reconciles with what you already logged (no duplicates), recognizes transfers and statement payments, suggests categories from your history and even has an analyze with AI mode to identify transfers, recurring items and the card payment automatically. Re-importing the same period results in zero new entries.

This settles the manual spreadsheet problem for good and is the fastest way to start: on the first day of your trial you already see the whole month ready.

You can try it with a 7-day free trial, no card. Import your latest statement and see the difference.

In short: export the statement (preferably OFX), import it into the app and let reconciliation avoid duplicates. Typing transaction by transaction is a thing of the past.