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American Express statements: Convert an Amex statement to Excel, CSV, or QBO.

Amex hands you a QuickBooks or Quicken download for recent activity and the past six billing statements. Everything older is a PDF. Convert those, with charges and payments pointing the way a credit card account expects.

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  • Past the six-statement window
  • Exported as a credit card
  • Supplementary cards kept apart

Export transactions

Choose the scope, format, fields, and column order.

Scope

Selected transactions (40)

Exports only the currently selected rows.

Format

Excel

A workbook with frozen headers and an export-info sheet.

Preset

StandardAccountingCompactDetailed

Row order

Match current view

1,284 rows · 10 columns

Export Excel

PDF statement you upload

scanned_statement_047.pdfUnstructured

24/10 STRIPE PAYOUT 4af2c9........4,820.00

23-10 AWS EMEA SARL us-east-1 1,204.00-

22 OCT WHOLE FOODS MKT #214 112.88

21/10 UBER *TRIP..............24.40

20-OCT-2025 GUSTO PAY 9931 18,440.00

[illegible: scan quality]

Excel file you download

amex_platinum_oct.xlsxXLSX
ABD
1DateNarrationAmount
224 OctSTRIPE PAYOUT 4af2c9+4,820.00
323 OctAWS EMEA SARL us-east-1−1,204.00
422 OctWHOLE FOODS MKT #214−112.88
521 OctUBER *TRIP−24.40
620 OctGUSTO PAY 9931−18,440.00
TransactionsSheet 1 of 1SUM −14,961.28
New charges, payments, credits, and fees from the statement PDF become one table with signed numeric amounts. Illustrative data.

Six statements download. The rest are PDFs.

American Express is unusually good about machine-readable files, and unusually specific about how far they reach: its own help says you can download recent activity and the past six billing statements to Quicken, QuickBooks, or CSV. A bookkeeper closing a year needs twelve, an accountant taking on a client needs twenty-four, and a business account can pull seven years of statements but only ever as documents. Past the sixth statement the format changes from a file your ledger reads to a PDF laid out for a printer, with new charges in one section, payments and credits in another, and fees and interest in a third.

How it works

Convert an Amex statement, screen by screen

  1. 01

    Upload the PDF

    Personal and Business card statements both work, up to 50 MB each, scanned and password-protected files included.

    The import dialog, with Email import called out beside Upload files: a statement can be dropped in or forwarded to a private address.
    Drop the PDF in, or forward the statement email from American Express to your private import address. The run shown here is a Chase statement: the flow is identical whichever issuer printed yours.
  2. 02

    Confirm the import

    Review the queued files and set whether statements carrying warnings still count in your analytics. Nothing is read until you confirm.

    The import dialog, with the setting that keeps statements carrying warnings in your analytics called out.
    The warning types that will still count toward analytics are named before anything is extracted.
  3. 03

    Let it parse

    Charges, payments, credits, fees, and interest are read section by section, the statement is recognised as a card, and the totals are reconciled against the printed new balance.

    The statement library, with the active jobs counter called out: imports still running are counted there.
    The statement lands in the library with its issuer, when it arrived, and the money in and out.
  4. 04

    Check the rows

    The library flags what needs a second look before you open the statement. Inside, the ledger sits beside the statement page with the row under review boxed in both panes.

    The transactions ledger, with the source column called out: every row keeps the statement it came from.
    Every row keeps the Amex statement it was read from, so a figure can be traced back.
  5. 05

    Export

    XLSX for Excel, CSV for another ledger, or a QBO file QuickBooks imports into a credit card account, with charges raising the balance and payments reducing it.

    Export dialog with Excel selected, configurable fields and presets on the left, and a live transaction preview.
    Choose Excel from the expanded format menu, then configure the columns and preview the selected rows before export.

Before you convert

How to download your American Express statement

Statements and downloads live in the same place, and reach different distances.

  1. 1

    Sign in and open Statements & Activity

    Your recent transactions are listed here, with the previous two years viewable on a personal account.

  2. 2

    Pick the billing period

    Each closed period has its own statement. A statement that has been archived is requested from the same list and is available within about 24 hours.

  3. 3

    Download the statement PDF

    This is the record that reaches the whole archive: seven years on a Business account through @ Work, and further back than any spreadsheet download on a personal one.

  4. 4

    Or use the download, while it reaches

    Amex offers Quicken, QuickBooks, and CSV downloads for recent activity and the past six billing statements. Inside that window there is nothing to convert; outside it, convert the PDF.

Formats and the six-statement window from American Express's own customer service pages, checked September 16, 2026. The Year-End Summary is a category summary rather than a transaction list, so it is not a substitute for the statements.

What the parse is careful about

A card file, not a bank file

The statement is recognised as a card from the minimum payment, payment due date, and credit limit it prints, so the QuickBooks export describes a credit card account. Charges raise the balance and payments reduce it, which is what a bank-shaped file gets backwards.

Supplementary cards stay identifiable

Amex prints activity per card member. Each row keeps the card it belongs to, so spend can be split by cardholder in a pivot table rather than by hand.

Fees and interest kept out of spend

Annual fees, late fees, and interest charges are parsed from their own sections and categorized apart, so a spend total is a spend total.

Reconciled against the printed close

Previous balance, payments, new charges, and the new balance have to agree with the rows read from the page, and a statement that does not tie is flagged rather than exported quietly.

Past the download window

The seventh statement back, and the seventieth, convert exactly like the first, which is the whole reason this page exists.

Handled like financial data

Files are processed for your account only, are not used to train anything, and can be deleted once the export is downloaded.

What converts, and what you get back

StatementWhat comes out
Personal cardsGreen, Gold, Platinum, Blue Cash, Delta, and the rest: new charges, payments, credits, fees, and interest as one signed table.
Business cardsThe same rows with the card member on each, so a statement covering several employees splits by cardholder.
Charge cards with no preset limitStill recognised as a card from the payment due date and minimum payment, so the export is a credit card file either way.
Older archived statementsAnything you can download as a PDF, including periods long past the six statements the Quicken and QuickBooks download covers.
Scanned or emailed copiesOCR runs first, so a saved scan converts like a downloaded PDF, and is worth a closer review.
Formats outXLSX, CSV, JSON, or a ledger file (OFX, QBO, QFX, QIF, IIF, Xero, Sage, MYOB, NetSuite), exporting exactly the rows your filters left on screen.

FAQ

Common questions

How do I convert an Amex statement to Excel?

Download the statement PDF from Statements & Activity, upload it, let it parse and reconcile against the printed new balance, review the rows beside the page, then export as XLSX.

Amex already offers a QuickBooks download. Why convert anything?

Because that download covers recent activity and the past six billing statements. A year-end close needs twelve, taking on a client needs more, and neither is available as a file. The statements go back years, so the PDFs are the only complete record.

Will the charges import into QuickBooks the right way round?

Yes. The statement is recognised as a card, and the export is written as a credit card account, so charges raise what you owe and payments reduce it. A file exported as a bank account does the opposite, which is the single most common mess after a hand-built conversion.

Can I split spend by cardholder?

Yes. Amex prints activity per card member and each exported row keeps that, so a statement covering several supplementary cards can be totalled per person in a pivot table.

Is the Year-End Summary enough for bookkeeping?

Not on its own. It summarises spend by category rather than listing transactions, so it cannot be reconciled line by line or imported into a ledger. The statements can.

What if the parse gets a row wrong?

Fix it before exporting. The ledger supports inline edits, range selection, and bulk recategorization, and manual corrections are protected from later automated changes.

Converting a statement from a different bank?

The same workspace, written up for the format each one prints.

The statements the download does not reach.

Upload an Amex statement, check the rows against the printed page, and export the file your books actually need.