Bank Statement Examples
A comprehensive visual guide to understanding bank statements: essential fields, checking vs savings vs credit cards, digital vs scanned formats, and how to extract clean data for accounting.
Damin Mutti
Founder
What is a bank statement?
A bank statement is an official document issued by your financial institution that summarizes all account activity for a specific period (usually one month). It shows every deposit, withdrawal, fee, and interest transaction, along with your opening and closing balances.
Why bank statements matter
Accounting
Reconcile your books to verify accuracy
Taxes
Required backup for income and expenses
Loans
Lenders require statements for approval
Audits
Official proof of financial activity
Bank statements are legal documents. They serve as official proof of your financial activity and are accepted by tax authorities, auditors, lenders, and courts. Unlike transaction histories you generate from online banking, statements are certified records issued by the bank.
Important: Keep bank statements for at least 7 years for tax purposes. Most banks provide online access for 12-18 months, but older statements may require special requests or fees.
Essential fields on every bank statement
Regardless of the bank or account type, every bank statement contains these core fields. Understanding them is critical for accurate accounting and reconciliation.
Zera AI extracts all these fields automatically: No manual data entry required. Upload your bank statement PDF (digital or scanned) and Zera Books extracts every field with 99.6% accuracy in seconds.
Checking vs savings vs credit card statements
While all bank statements share core fields, the type of account determines transaction patterns, balance behavior, and accounting treatment.
Credit card statements: key differences
Credit card statements look similar to bank statements but have critical differences that affect accounting treatment. Understanding these differences prevents categorization errors.
Unique to credit cards
Credit limit
Maximum amount you can charge to the card
Available credit
Credit limit minus current balance
Minimum payment
Required payment to avoid late fees
Payment due date
Deadline to avoid late fees and interest
APR
Annual percentage rate for carried balances
Interest charges
Finance charges on unpaid balance
Rewards earned
Cash back, points, or miles accumulated
Accounting implications
Balance behavior (reversed)
Purchases increase balance (liability)
Payments decrease balance
Interest expense
Interest charges are business expenses and must be recorded separately from purchases
Rewards income
Cash back and rewards reduce expenses or are recorded as other income
Two-cycle tracking
Need to track both when purchases occur (expense date) and when payment is made (cash flow date)
Common mistake: Recording credit card payments as expenses. The payment itself is not an expense - it reduces a liability. The original purchases are the expenses. Zera Books automatically handles this accounting treatment correctly.
Digital PDF vs scanned PDF bank statements
Not all PDFs are the same. Understanding the difference between digital (text-based) and scanned (image-based) PDFs helps you understand processing accuracy and conversion time.
Zera OCR handles both: Whether your statement is a clean digital PDF or a blurry scanned image, Zera Books processes it accurately. The proprietary OCR engine is trained specifically on financial documents and adapts to any quality level.
Reading transaction details
The transaction list is the heart of your bank statement. Each transaction contains multiple fields that tell the complete story of account activity. Here is what each field means and why it matters for accounting.
Transaction date vs posting date
Transaction date
When you actually made the purchase or initiated the transaction
Example: You buy lunch on Friday January 15th (transaction date)
Posting date
When the transaction cleared and was applied to your account balance
Example: It posts to your account on Monday January 18th (posting date)
For accounting: Use the posting date when reconciling your bank statement because that is when the transaction affected your balance. The transaction date is helpful for context but posting date is what matters for reconciliation.
Common bank statement formats
Every bank uses a slightly different statement layout. While all contain the same essential fields, the formatting, column order, and design vary. Here are common characteristics of major US banks.
Zera AI processes all bank formats: Unlike template-based tools that require configuration for each bank, Zera Books dynamically recognizes any bank statement format worldwide. No setup, no templates, no training required.
Extracting data from bank statements for accounting
Bank statement PDFs are not directly usable in accounting software. You need to extract the data into Excel, CSV, or QuickBooks format. Here is the process for converting bank statements into structured data.
Manual vs automated extraction
Manual data entry
Typing transactions from PDF into Excel or accounting software line by line
AI-powered automation
Upload PDF, AI extracts and categorizes all transactions automatically
How Manning Elliott saves 10 hours per week processing bank statements
A CPA firm managing multiple clients with various bank statement formats from different institutions.
"My clients send me all kinds of messy PDFs from different banks. This tool handles them all and saves me probably 10 hours a week."
Ashish Josan
Manager, CPA at Manning Elliott
Time saved
All banks supported
Extraction accuracy
FAQs
Detailed answers to common questions about bank statements and data extraction.
Related Resources
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