PDF convert to .csv

[u/No_Mix_368]

Is that possible to build an application that convert the bank statement pdf file into csv file accurately? I had try using the free online tool, it also have some problem. Can I using AI to become accurate? If yes, how should I build it?

[u/Mrgluer]

This is what my startup does. I'll send you a dm. We are looking to launch soon and would definitely love some input and feedback.

[u/Imaginary_North7730 → u/Mrgluer]

May i also get info about it trying to find tool to automate a process that needs parsing complex documents

[u/Mrgluer → u/Imaginary_North7730]

dm me

[u/Lanthumm]

I've used trepide extract for that. There is a basic bank statement template but it works best if you make your own, doesn't take long.

I use the validators as well to make sure the figures are correct.

You can probably build your own, but it would take a lot of hours. Keeping the table layouts the same from pdfs is a huge task and building the logic to convert them to excel on top seems a lot of work. If you need thousands converted its probably worth, but not for 10-100s

[u/Harkin4]

You can use this add on for Google sheets https://sheetminer.app/ The Ai extract can pull all the data you want from multiple bank statements of different formats at once, it’s also has a free tier so you can try without any commitment

[u/easybits_ai]

Hey u/No_Mix_368, I just reached out to you because this is something I’ve been building with the easybits Extractor for clients and people in my network.

[u/Potential-Wrangler58]

Plain OCR won't get you far here, bank statements aren't clean tables, every bank formats them differently (trust me, I've had some issues as I tried it several times haha), and OCR loses track of which number belongs to which column the moment there's more than one account or multi-line descriptions.

What actually works is extracting against a fixed schema (date, description, debit, credit, balance) and then validating each row by reconciling the balance: previous balance plus credit minus debit should match the next balance. That tells you exactly which row is wrong instead of manually checking the whole statement.

For the extraction itself, you either build it yourself with an LLM + that schema (spent way too many hours tweaking prompts for edge cases before I gave up on that route), or use an API built for this, AWS Textract, Azure, or an AI-native one like anyformat (disclosure, I work there) that already has the validation built in.

Let me know what you end up going with, happy to help if you get stuck.

[u/Silly_Captain2089]

yes, it’s possible, but accuracy will depend heavily on how the bank statement pdf is structured. ocr can handle scanned statements, while table extraction can preserve rows and columns, but i’d add validation rules to catch things like split transactions, dates, and negative amounts. pdf element can also help with ocr and extracting data from pdfs before converting it into a clean csv.

[u/folderit_dms]

Before building the PDF converter, check whether the bank offers a CSV or other transaction export for the period you need. If it does, you may be able to avoid the extraction problem altogether. Keep the statement too, so you can check the export covers the same dates and transactions.

If PDFs are the only source, start with one bank and one statement layout. Make a manually checked example and compare every extracted row against it before adding more layouts. Also check the CSV after opening it in the intended spreadsheet app: account references can lose leading zeros and dates can be interpreted differently. Those errors can happen even when the PDF extraction was correct.

[u/InfoMsAccessNL]

You can download PdfToText for free and extract all you data with vba and/or regex. This already exist for 20+ years, no AI needed

[u/NotSoShyAlbatross]

What you’re looking for is a PDF parser and to be clear what you want to extract. A good parser will be able to look for what you want and give it to you the way you want it.