How to Review and Correct an Imported Statement

Where to Start

Every imported statement is listed on the Statements page. The Status column tells you at a glance whether a statement needs you. Double-click any row, or choose Open from its menu, to open the statement workspace: the rows Bankflow imported on one side and the original PDF on the other.

You don't have to review every statement. Most import cleanly and count straight away. This guide is for the ones that say otherwise.

What the Status Column Means

The Verification Checks

At the top of the workspace, a line like 92 Checks out, 4 of 4 checks passed summarises how well the statement agrees with itself. Expand it to see each check:

• Balances close: the opening balance plus the transactions equals the closing balance.
• Follows the previous statement: the opening balance meets the closing balance of the period before it.
• Rows trace to the page: every transaction was found in the text of the source document.
• Nothing missing or doubled: every row on the page is accounted for, and none is counted twice.

The result is one of three bands: Checks out, Worth a look, or Doesn't add up. A check that can't run is left out rather than counted against the statement. The first statement from an account has nothing before it to follow, for example. The number is there so a list can be sorted; the checks are what tell you what to do.

File history

Below the checks, File history shows what the PDF records about itself: the software that produced it, when it was created, and whether it was changed later. This is context, not a verdict. Those details are easy to rewrite, so they never move the score, and nothing here says whether a statement is genuine. The balances are the stronger evidence.

Compare Rows Against the PDF

Click any row and the PDF moves to where that row was read, with the text highlighted. You can drag and scroll the PDF freely. Under View, choose the row order (the same order as the PDF, or rows needing review first) and whether to highlight every imported row or only the one you're on.

What Each Row Shows

• Description: the text as the statement printed it. Hover it to see the original wording if the description was changed.
• Merchant icon: the logo of the business Bankflow identified for the row, at the end of the description, the same icon as on the Transactions page. Hover it to see the merchant's name. Rows with no merchant, such as transfers between your own accounts, have no icon.
• Paperclip: the row has a linked invoice, receipt, payout report, or loan statement. Click it to open the document and see how it splits the payment.
• Category: the row's category, with its icon. On a narrower window it moves under the description so the PDF keeps its width. Categories are changed from the Transactions page or by a rule.
• Amount and Balance: the figures as read, money in in green and money out in red, with the running balance the statement printed.
• Status: where the row stands. See the table below; hover a status for the full explanation.
• Analytics switch: whether the row counts in your totals.

Search the Rows

The search box above the rows matches a merchant, a category, a description, or an amount. Search Stripe to see every payout, Rent for every rent payment, or Uncategorised for the rows still without a category. Search works together with the filter chips, so Needs a look plus a merchant name shows only that merchant's rows that are waiting for you.

Row Statuses

The filter chips above the rows narrow the list:

• All: every row on the statement, except rows on pages you dropped.
• Needs a look: rows with a problem only you can settle, such as a balance mismatch or a suspected duplicate.
• Source hold only: rows waiting only because the whole statement hasn't been checked against its PDF yet. Nothing is wrong with them individually.
• Approved: rows you approved, corrected, or put back by hand.
• Excluded: rows outside your totals, however they got there.
• Edited: rows whose values you changed.

Check the Balances

A strip across the workspace shows the opening and closing balances, money in, money out, what the rows add up to, and the difference. When the difference is zero, the statement reconciles. When it isn't, the amount tells you what to look for: a missing row, a doubled one, or a misread figure. A balance Bankflow calculated rather than read from the page is marked as calculated.

By the time you see a statement, Bankflow has already re-read the rows where its running balance broke and kept a new reading only where the balance then carried through to the cent (see importing statements). What's left in the difference is what it couldn't settle on its own.

Rows the Running Balance Proves

When a statement prints a running balance beside its rows, Bankflow uses it to approve rows for you. A row is approved on import when the balance before it, plus its amount, equals the balance printed beside it, exactly to the cent, and the chain runs from the opening balance the statement prints to the closing balance it prints. Only the rows where the chain breaks wait for you, each with the amount it's off by.

Nothing is approved this way when the proof can't be made: the statement prints no running balance (see the next section), or no opening or closing balance; the balances contradict what's on the page; the statement holds more than one account; or so many rows break that the balance column itself is probably misread. A row with a missing amount, an unreadable date or an unclear direction waits for you even when its balance ties. When every row is proven, the statement counts in your totals straight away; when some are held, it waits until you've dealt with them.

Statements With No Running Balance

A card statement, and some bank statements, print no balance beside each row, only a summary: the balance it started from, the payments and credits, the purchases and other charges, and the balance it ended on. Bankflow approves the rows of such a statement when three things hold, each to the cent:

• Each transaction is on a line of its own on the statement, with its date, its amount and its description, and no two transactions share a line.
• Every figure in the summary is printed on the statement, wherever the summary sits on the page and whatever it calls them.
• The payments come to the payments total it prints, the charges to the charges total, and together they take the opening balance to the closing one.

A missed transaction, an extra one, a misread amount or a payment read as a charge would leave a total short, so when all three hold, every row is approved and the statement counts in your totals straight away. Unlike a running balance, the totals prove the rows together, so it's all or nothing: when any check fails, every row waits for you, as it would without it. A scanned statement has no text to find the lines in, so its rows always wait for you.

Fix What Was Misread

Choose Edit on a row to correct its date, description, amount, or type. Add an edit reason if you want a note for later, and tick Apply fix to similar rows to correct every row with the same description at once. Every edit is kept in the row's edit history, and the checks recalculate straight away.

Right-click a row, choose the … (More actions) button that shows when you point at a row or tab to it, or press Shift+F10 or the menu key on a focused row. The menu starts with Review: Approve, Exclude and Put back, which act on the row at once, as its buttons do. Below it is the same menu as on the Transactions page: Copy, Edit, Category, Tags, Contact, Flag for review, Exclude from analytics or Include in analytics, and Delete transaction. Edit opens the row's correction form under it, with its reason and Apply fix to similar rows; the change and its reason go into the row's edit history, and the totals and checks are worked out again. From the workspace, a row can't be moved out of the statement you're reviewing. A deleted row leaves the list at once and comes back if you choose Undo. Right-click a row that's selected along with others and the menu acts on all of them, after asking; Edit works on one row at a time. Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac) selects the rows waiting for a look, and pressing it again clears them.

Each row's status is Approved, Needs a look or Excluded, and a corrected row also says Edited. Point at an approved row's status to see who approved it: the parser, the statement's own balances, or a person. A row that needs a look says why under its status, such as the balance it's off by. Documents and carrier commission statements open in the same workspace and work the same way, with Mark for a look and Show on the page in their menu.

Each row also has a switch to count it or keep it out of your totals. Keeping a row out doesn't delete it. A suspected duplicate can be discarded after you've compared the two occurrences in the source.

To change the statement itself, click Edit in the header to open Statement details. You can rename it, correct the opening or closing balance, change its currency, bank, or folder, or add a transaction the parser missed. Balance changes are kept in the statement's history too.

Set the Statement's Period and Account

Beside the currency at the top of the workspace are two chips: the days the statement covers, such as 1 Sep – 30 Sep 2026, and its account type.

The period

The period decides where a statement sits: which months Workpapers and the monthly close count as covered, which rows read as outside the statement, and the order statements chain in. It is read from the statement. When the statement prints none, it is worked out from its first and last transaction and marked from rows, and a statement with neither reads Period not set.

1. Click the period chip to open Statement period.
2. Pick the first and last day, as the statement prints them. The dialog shows the days its rows run over, and warns you if some of them fall outside the days you picked.
3. Choose Save period.

A period set by hand is kept: no later read of the statement replaces it.

The account

The account chip says whether the statement is a Bank account or a Credit card, which decides which way its balance runs and what QuickBooks, Quicken, and OFX exports describe. The type is the account's, so changing it here changes it for every statement of the account. From the same chip, Choose account… (or Move to another account…) says which of the bank's accounts the statement belongs to, and Edit account… opens the account's record. See statements, accounts, and folders.

Drop a Page of Sample Transactions

Some statements include a "how to read your statement" panel with sample transactions laid out exactly like real ones. They read perfectly, so nothing flags them. Open Pages in this statement from the workspace, and pick the page to drop. Everything imported from that page is excluded from your totals. The rows aren't deleted, so you can check what was removed and put them back.

Approve and Include the Statement in Analytics

When you're satisfied, approve the rows that were waiting for you. Approving records that you checked the values against the source. It doesn't rerun the parser or change any figure, and your decision stays in the statement's history.

Whether a statement counts in your dashboard, cash flow, and reports is controlled from its menu on the Statements page: Include in analytics or Exclude from analytics. You can do the same for several statements at once from the selection bar. A statement with an unknown currency, no included rows, or an unresolved duplicate can't be included until that's fixed.

Other Things You Can Do From the Menu

• Report a problem sends the statement to our team with what went wrong: missing transactions, wrong balances, duplicates, wrong categories, misread text, or an unsupported format.
• Delete original PDF removes the stored PDF but keeps its transactions. You won't be able to preview the original or review rows against it afterwards. To do this for every import automatically, turn on Delete original document after processing in Settings.
• Change bank and Choose account… correct where the statement is filed. See statements, accounts, and folders.
• Analyse statement opens a one-screen summary of the statement.
• Run risk analysis… audits the statement for lending risk. See risk analysis.

Next Step

With your statements in order, work with the transactions they produced, or see how accounts and folders keep many statements organised.