Bank Statement CSV Formats: US and UK Date, Sign and Column Rules by Bank

A reference for 10 US and UK banks: how each statement's dates are read (month first or day first), how debits, credits and signs are decided, which balance labels count, and the exact CSV columns that come out.

Source and scope. Every row is generated from BankSheet's statement parser and export code, and an automated test runs the real parser against each row. It describes how BankSheet reads each bank's text-based statement PDF, not each bank's own CSV download. Updated 12 October 2026.

Statement format rules by bank

The bank is identified from text on the statement, checked top to bottom in this order; the first match wins. The last column shows how the statement line “03/04/2025 …” is read when nothing else on the statement settles the order.

US vs UK statement dates

Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, Capital One and American Express are read month first (MM/DD) with slashes, and the year may be missing (05/01). Capital One rows written like “Apr 3” are read too, and an American Express date followed by an asterisk (11/21/25*) is read as that date. Barclays, HSBC and NatWest are read day first (DD/MM) with a slash or a hyphen, and written months such as “2 Aug”, “02 Aug 25” or “24 AUG” are read. Revolut dates such as “1 Jun 2024” and “Apr 12, 2023” are read; numeric Revolut dates are day first, and the whole statement switches to month first only if it contains a date whose second number is over 12 (such as 09/13/2025) and none whose first number is.

Banks without their own parser use one order for the whole statement, so a statement never mixes the two: day first if any date's first number is over 12, otherwise month first if any date's second number is over 12, otherwise day first for UK-looking statements (a £ sign, GBP, a sort code or a UK bank name) and month first for the rest. They accept a slash or a hyphen, a missing year and written months.

Year when a row prints none: The year printed on the row; otherwise the statement period or closing date printed on the statement (a December row on a statement ending in January gets the earlier year); with no period, the latest year that keeps the dates in order and not in the future.

Several transactions on one day: Barclays, HSBC and NatWest print the date only on the first transaction of each day. The rows after it take that date until a page break, a new table header, a balance line (such as “Balance carried forward”) or a total line. A transaction whose description runs over several lines, with the amount on the last one (as on HSBC and Barclays statements), is read as one row. Unknown banks get the same handling when the statement reads day first.

A date that cannot exist on the calendar, such as 31/02/2025 or 29/02/2025, is not guessed: the row is kept with the date exactly as printed and flagged in the preview so you can check it against the PDF. A transaction row starts with a date. Which date shapes count (numeric with or without a year, written month) depends on the bank, as in the table. For Barclays, HSBC, NatWest and day-first unknown banks, a row that prints no date takes the date printed above it, and a row whose description runs over several lines is read as one row ending at the line with the amount. Rows that start with an ISO date (2025-03-04) are not read. When lines with an amount but no date sit between rows and are skipped, the preview says how many. Two-digit years are read as 20YY (03/04/25 → 2025). Exports write the date as YYYY-MM-DD (a flagged impossible date stays as printed), so the CSV is unambiguous whichever way the statement printed it.

Debits, credits and sign conventions

• Three or more amounts on a line: the first three are debit, credit and balance.
• Two amounts: the transaction amount, then the balance.
• One amount: the transaction amount, with no balance.
• Unsigned banks (all except Capital One and Revolut): a single amount is money in when it ends in CR or the line contains one of these words, and money out otherwise: deposit, credit, payroll, payment received, incoming, faster payment from, transfer from, payment from, direct credit, refund, interest, ACH Stripe, mobile check.
• Barclays, HSBC and NatWest: when the balance moved by exactly the amount since the previous balance, the direction follows the balance; an HSBC row with payment type CR is money in.
• Capital One: A leading minus is money out and a leading plus is money in. An unsigned amount takes its direction from the running balance (balance up = money in, down = money out); with no earlier balance to compare, a line starting “To”, “Card payment” or “Payment to” is money out and anything else money in. The last amount on the line is the balance. A space between the sign and the amount is allowed (“- $300.00”, “+ $1.00”), and a trailing Debit or Credit category word is dropped from the description.
• Revolut: A leading minus is money out and a leading plus is money in. An unsigned amount takes its direction from the running balance (balance up = money in, down = money out); with no earlier balance to compare, a line starting “To”, “Card payment” or “Payment to” is money out and anything else money in. The last amount on the line is the balance.
• Amounts need exactly two decimals. Thousands commas, a leading minus, a $ or £ sign and a CR or DR suffix are allowed. A number followed by % (an interest rate) is not an amount. 0.00 in a debit or credit column counts as empty.

Known quirk. The wording match looks for whole words anywhere in the line, so a single-amount line such as “CREDIT CARD PAYMENT” is read as money in. Statements that print separate debit and credit columns (three amounts per line) avoid this; the balance check flags it otherwise.

Opening and closing balance labels

The opening balance is the first amount (with two decimals) after one of these labels, tried in this order: Opening balance, Beginning balance, Previous balance, Balance brought forward, Start balance, Brought forward. The closing balance uses: Closing balance, Ending balance, New balance, Balance carried forward, End balance, Carried forward. Both are needed for the opening-to-closing balance check; without them the check reports “incomplete”.

Currency

Currency comes from the whole statement text, checked in this order: £ or GBP → GBP; € or EUR → EUR; $ or USD → USD; otherwise unknown.

Skipped lines and scanned PDFs

Lines containing “page” followed by a number, and a header line that starts with “Date” and contains “Description”, are skipped. A PDF with fewer than 40 non-space characters of text, or under 30 characters per page, is treated as scanned and nothing is extracted (BankSheet does not do OCR).

The CSV columns BankSheet writes

Every export writes dates as YYYY-MM-DD (except a flagged impossible date, which is kept exactly as printed) and amounts as plain numbers. The Excel download has the same columns on a “Transactions” sheet and a “Statement” sheet with bank, currency, pages, opening and closing balance.

Worked examples from BankSheet's sample statements

These lines come from the synthetic sample statements BankSheet ships for testing, with the values the parser returns.

08/05/2025  CHECKCARD WHOLE FOODS               86.42       0.00        15,563.58

02/08/2025  FASTER PAYMENT FROM CLIENT                      1,500.00     3,600.00

01/09/2025  Card payment · Notion                 -24.00     476.00