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Nanonets Multi-Currency Bank Statement Processing: Template Limitations

January 29, 2025

8 min read

Nanonets offers multi-currency support, but its template-based architecture requires separate model training for each currency format. For international businesses and multi-entity accounting firms processing statements in USD, EUR, GBP, and other currencies, this creates significant workflow friction.

If your business operates internationally or manages clients across multiple countries, you're dealing with bank statements in different currencies—USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, and more. Each currency comes with its own formatting conventions: decimal separators (commas vs periods), currency symbol placement (before or after amounts), date formats (MM/DD/YYYY vs DD/MM/YYYY), and statement layouts.

Nanonets markets itself as a multi-language and multi-currency document processing platform, but the reality is more complex. While Nanonets can handle multiple currencies, its template-based OCR architecture means you need to train separate models for each currency format you encounter. For accountants managing international clients, this creates a significant operational burden.

This article examines how Nanonets handles multi-currency bank statements, where its template requirements create workflow friction, and how modern AI-powered alternatives like Zera Books eliminate template training entirely.

Key Takeaways

Nanonets requires separate template training for each currency format (USD, EUR, GBP, etc.)
Mixed-currency statements (multiple currencies in one document) require manual handling
Each new bank format needs 20-50 sample documents for training
Zera Books uses dynamic AI that processes any currency format without templates

How Nanonets Handles Multi-Currency Bank Statements

Nanonets offers a bank statement OCR model that can extract currency information as one of its default fields. According to their documentation, the system can identify "Currency Used: The currency used in the bank statement. This can vary based on country."

While this sounds straightforward, the underlying architecture reveals important limitations for firms processing international documents.

Template-Based Processing Model

Nanonets uses a template-based OCR approach, which means:

Template Creation

Each unique bank format requires creating and training a dedicated template

Training Data

Requires 20-50 sample documents to train each template to acceptable accuracy

Currency Variants

Chase EUR statements require different training than Chase USD statements

Maintenance Burden

When banks update layouts, templates must be retrained with new samples

While Nanonets advertises "no template setup required" for their pre-trained models, this applies only to the most common US bank formats in USD. Once you introduce international currencies or less common banks, you're back to manual template configuration.

Currency Detection vs. Currency Processing

There's an important distinction to understand: Nanonets can detect that a statement uses EUR, GBP, or JPY, but detecting the currency symbol doesn't mean the OCR model is trained to accurately extract transaction amounts, dates, and descriptions from that specific currency's formatting conventions.

Example: European Currency Formatting

EUR Statement Format

Amount: 1.234,56 € (comma as decimal, period as thousands separator, symbol after amount)

USD Statement Format

Amount: $1,234.56 (period as decimal, comma as thousands separator, symbol before amount)

If Nanonets' OCR model is trained on USD formatting, it may misinterpret "1.234,56 €" as "$1.23" instead of "€1,234.56"—a critical error that breaks reconciliation. This is why separate templates are necessary for each currency format.

Nanonets' Multi-Currency Limitations in Practice

For accounting firms managing international clients, Nanonets' template requirements create several workflow challenges:

Separate Templates Per Currency Format

Every unique combination of bank + currency requires its own template. If you process statements from:

•Chase USD accounts
•Chase EUR accounts (for European subsidiaries)
•HSBC GBP accounts (UK operations)
•RBC CAD accounts (Canadian branch)

You're managing four separate templates, each requiring training data and ongoing maintenance.

No Automatic Currency Detection Across Templates

When you upload a batch of statements, you must manually route each document to the correct template. Nanonets doesn't automatically detect "this is a EUR statement" and apply the EUR-trained model. You need to:

1.Manually identify which currency each statement uses
2.Sort statements into currency-specific batches
3.Process each batch through the corresponding template

This eliminates the efficiency gains of batch processing for multi-currency workflows.

Mixed-Currency Statements Require Manual Handling

Some international businesses have bank statements showing transactions in multiple currencies—a checking account that holds both USD and CAD, or a credit card with purchases in EUR, GBP, and USD. Nanonets' template system can't handle this:

Example scenario: An ecommerce business with a USD checking account processes international payments. Their statement shows:

01/15/2025 - Payment from UK client - £2,340.00 → $2,925.60 USD
01/18/2025 - Payment from EU client - €1,850.00 → $1,998.25 USD
01/22/2025 - Domestic sale - $4,250.00

A USD-trained template might fail to correctly extract the foreign currency amounts, while a multi-currency template doesn't exist in Nanonets' architecture. You'd need to manually extract these transactions.

Currency Conversion Rate Handling

International statements often show both the original transaction currency and the converted account currency (e.g., "Charged €500.00, Posted $540.25"). Nanonets doesn't have built-in logic to handle these dual-currency line items. The OCR might:

Extract only the EUR amount (missing the USD posting)
Extract both amounts into the same field (creating formatting errors)
Misidentify which amount is the posting amount for reconciliation

This requires manual review and correction for every foreign transaction.

Regional Date Format Confusion

Different countries use different date formats alongside their currencies:

US Format (USD)

03/15/2025 (MM/DD/YYYY)

UK Format (GBP)

15/03/2025 (DD/MM/YYYY)

Japanese Format (JPY)

2025/03/15 (YYYY/MM/DD)

European Format (EUR)

15.03.2025 (DD.MM.YYYY)

If your USD template is trained on MM/DD/YYYY and you try to process a USD statement from an international branch using DD/MM/YYYY, the extraction will fail. This is another dimension where currency-specific templates are required.

Why Multi-Currency Processing Matters for Modern Accounting

Multi-currency bank statement processing isn't a niche requirement—it's increasingly common across multiple business types:

International Businesses

Companies with operations in multiple countries maintain bank accounts in local currencies. A US-based business with European and Asian subsidiaries might process:

→USD accounts (US headquarters)
→EUR accounts (German subsidiary)
→GBP accounts (UK office)
→SGD accounts (Singapore operations)

Monthly reconciliation requires processing all these formats simultaneously. Template-based systems create bottlenecks.

Multi-Entity Accounting Firms

CPA firms and bookkeeping services managing clients across borders deal with constant currency variety. A Vancouver-based firm with US and Canadian clients processes both CAD and USD statements monthly. Adding a single UK client means implementing GBP processing—which in Nanonets requires building and training an entirely new template.

For firms that charge flat-rate bookkeeping fees, the time spent managing multiple currency templates directly erodes profitability.

Ecommerce and Online Sellers

Businesses selling internationally through platforms like Amazon, Shopify, or Stripe receive payments in multiple currencies. Their bank statements might show:

→Stripe payouts in USD, EUR, GBP (depending on customer location)
→Amazon marketplace payments in local currencies (JPY for Japan, AUD for Australia)
→Currency conversion fees and foreign exchange adjustments

Accurate financial reporting requires extracting all these transactions correctly, not just the primary currency.

Investment and Holding Companies

Firms managing international investments hold assets denominated in various currencies. Portfolio accounting requires processing bank statements from custody accounts in USD, EUR, CHF, JPY, and other currencies. The volume and variety make template management impractical—you need a system that handles any currency format dynamically.

The Core Problem

Multi-currency processing shouldn't require 5-10x the setup effort compared to single-currency workflows. Yet with template-based systems like Nanonets, that's exactly what happens. For every additional currency you encounter, you're duplicating your entire OCR infrastructure—training data, template maintenance, processing workflows.

How Zera Books Processes Multi-Currency Statements Without Templates

Zera Books takes a fundamentally different approach: dynamic AI processing that adapts to any currency format without template training. Here's how it works:

Zera AI: Universal Currency Recognition

Zera AI is trained on 3.2+ million real financial documents including bank statements from over 100 countries and currencies. Unlike template-based OCR that needs explicit training for "Chase EUR" vs "Chase USD," Zera AI learned the underlying patterns of bank statement structures across all currencies during its training.

This means when you upload a EUR statement, Zera AI recognizes:

The € symbol indicates Euro currency
Commas are decimal separators (not thousands separators)
Periods are thousands separators (not decimal points)
Date formats follow DD.MM.YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY conventions
Currency symbols appear after amounts, not before

Key Capabilities

Automatic Currency Detection

Upload a batch of statements in USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, JPY, or any other currency—Zera AI identifies each currency automatically and processes accordingly. No manual sorting required.

Mixed-Currency Statement Support

Statements showing transactions in multiple currencies (e.g., "Charged £500, Posted $625") are handled correctly. Zera AI extracts both the original currency and the posted amount, maintaining reconciliation accuracy.

Regional Date Format Adaptation

Whether a statement uses MM/DD/YYYY (US), DD/MM/YYYY (UK), or YYYY/MM/DD (ISO), Zera AI interprets dates correctly based on the document's origin and currency context.

Consistent Output Formatting

Regardless of input currency, Zera Books outputs clean CSV/Excel files with standardized formatting (decimal points, date formats) ready for QuickBooks, Xero, or your accounting system of choice.

Real-World Example: International Accounting Firm

A Vancouver-based CPA firm manages clients across Canada, the US, and the UK. Every month, they process:

•25 CAD statements (RBC, TD, Scotiabank)
•15 USD statements (Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo)
•5 GBP statements (Barclays, HSBC UK)

With Zera Books: Upload all 45 statements in one batch. Zera AI processes all currencies simultaneously. Download organized Excel files. Total time: 10 minutes.

With Nanonets: Sort into 3 currency batches. Process through 3 separate templates. Manually verify each output. Total time: 2+ hours.

Multi-Currency Workflow Comparison

Nanonets vs Zera Books for International Bank Statement Processing

Feature	Nanonets	Zera Books
Currency Detection	Manual (requires routing to correct template)	Automatic (AI identifies currency)
Template Setup	Required per currency format (20-50 samples)	Zero templates needed
Mixed-Currency Statements	Not supported (manual extraction)	Fully supported
Batch Processing	Must separate by currency first	All currencies in one batch
Decimal Separator Handling	Template-dependent (can misinterpret)	Context-aware (1.234,56 € vs $1,234.56)
Date Format Recognition	Template-dependent	Adaptive (MM/DD/YYYY vs DD/MM/YYYY)
Setup Time (New Currency)	2-4 hours (collect samples, train template)	0 minutes (works immediately)
Maintenance Burden	Ongoing (retrain when banks change formats)	Zero (AI adapts automatically)
Processing Time (50 multi-currency statements)	45-90 minutes (sort + process)	5-10 minutes (upload + download)
Pricing Model	$500+/month (volume limits, per-page fees)	$79/month unlimited

Bottom Line: Nanonets' template architecture creates 5-10x more work for multi-currency workflows compared to Zera Books' dynamic AI approach. For accounting firms managing international clients, this difference compounds monthly—hundreds of hours saved annually.

Step-by-Step: Processing Multi-Currency Statements with Zera Books

Here's the complete workflow for an international accounting firm processing bank statements in USD, CAD, EUR, and GBP:

Collect All Client Statements

Gather bank statements from all clients regardless of currency. No need to sort or organize by currency format—Zera AI handles everything.

Example batch: 15 USD Chase statements, 8 CAD RBC statements, 5 EUR Deutsche Bank statements, 3 GBP Barclays statements

Upload to Zera Books

Log into your Zera Books dashboard and upload all statements in one batch. Drag and drop up to 50+ PDFs simultaneously. The platform accepts:

Digital PDFs (text-based)
Scanned PDFs (image-based) via Zera OCR
Multi-page statements (any length)
Password-protected PDFs (provide password)

Zera AI Processes All Currencies

Within 30-60 seconds, Zera AI analyzes each statement and:

For USD statements:

• Recognizes $ symbol, MM/DD/YYYY dates
• Extracts amounts as $1,234.56 format
• Outputs in QuickBooks-ready format

For EUR statements:

• Recognizes € symbol, DD/MM/YYYY dates
• Converts 1.234,56 € to standard format
• Outputs in Xero-ready format

For CAD statements:

• Recognizes C$ or CAD symbol
• Handles bilingual statements (EN/FR)
• Outputs in Sage-ready format

For GBP statements:

• Recognizes £ symbol, DD/MM/YYYY dates
• Handles UK bank-specific layouts
• Outputs in Wave-ready format

Review AI-Categorized Transactions

Zera Books includes AI transaction categorization that works across all currencies. Each transaction is automatically categorized for your chart of accounts:

→Office supplies purchases (regardless of USD, EUR, or GBP)
→Payroll transactions (in any currency)
→Revenue deposits (multi-currency sales)
→Foreign exchange fees (automatically identified)

Time savings: AI categorization eliminates 30-45 minutes of manual categorization per client. For firms managing 20+ international clients, this saves 10-15 hours monthly.

Download and Import

Export clean files in your preferred format:

Excel (.xlsx)

Each currency in separate sheets, ready for analysis

CSV

Universal format for any accounting software

QBO/IIF

Direct QuickBooks import with categories

Xero-ready CSV

Pre-mapped for Xero bank reconciliation

Import transactions directly into QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, Wave, or any accounting system. All amounts are standardized for your base currency reporting requirements.

Complete Reconciliation

With all currencies processed consistently, your bank reconciliation workflow proceeds smoothly. No format inconsistencies, no decimal separator errors, no date confusion. Just clean, accurate data ready for financial reporting.

Total Processing Time

Traditional Manual Process

2-3 hours

With Zera Books

10-15 minutes

For a firm processing 50 multi-currency statements monthly, Zera Books saves 40+ hours per month—equivalent to hiring an additional part-time bookkeeper, but at $79/month instead of thousands in payroll.

"We were drowning in bank statements from two provinces and multiple revenue streams. Zera Books cut our month-end reconciliation from three days to about four hours."

Manroop Gill

Co-Founder, Zoom Books

Processing 40+ bank statements monthly across BC, ON, and US operations

Process Multi-Currency Statements Without Template Hassles

Stop managing separate templates for every currency format. Zera Books' AI handles USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, JPY, and 100+ currencies automatically—no training required.

Try for one week

$79/month unlimited conversions • All currencies supported • No template training