Banks that offer statements in CSV

Scooterza

Hi there, 

My wife and I have a joint bank account with HSBC. We also have a shared credit card. This works well for us. However, what DOESN'T work so well is that the statements from HSBC come through as PDF only. There is no option to download in a usable CSV or OFX or XLS format which would allow me to do any kind of analysis on our spending. 

This means I need to spend 30 minutes cleaning up the data every month for each account which is a pain! 

We're considering moving banks. Santander's call centre said they don't offer anything but PDF format statements either so that knocks them out of the running. Is there a bank out there that:

• Offers data analysis friendly statements (like CSV or XLS)?
• Offers shared accounts on both current and credit card accounts
• Works with Google Pay & Apple Pay (I know some of the new online banks sometimes have problems with these channels)
• Has a decent app (we do most of our banking via the app). 
• Bonus is that it offers some kind of integration with an online analysis tool where I can interrogate our spend, check budgets etc

Thanks for any advice. 

eskbanker

Scooterza said:

Santander's call centre said they don't offer anything but PDF format statements either so that knocks them out of the running.

Don't know why they said that, they definitely do offer transaction data downloads in a variety of formats including CSV, XLS, QIF, PDF and TXT....

RG2015

I had a Santander current account from 2015 to June 2021 and I was able to download transactions in csv. It needed a tiny amount of formatting but was all there. If I wanted, from when I opened it to now. In fact I downloaded everything when I closed the account.

NatWest is much better and you can download 7 years of transactions in xls format, albeit no more than 12 months at a time.

Not sure about Santander, but NatWest ticks your boxes 2 - 4 as well. As regards box 5, I have never tried but they do have budgeting and analysis functions in their app.

RG2015

I have just tried and you can download transactions from HSBC in CSV, OFX and QIF.

I have just downloaded mine in CSV and I get three columns, date, details and amount. I agree that it needs some tidying up. It is not as good as Santander and way behind NatWest.

NatWest gives you columns for 

Date, Type (ie DD), Description, Value, Balance, Account Name and Account Number.

You can also download all accounts at once (if you want) including credit card, current account and savings accounts.

Thrugelmir

Credit card statements aren't the same as bank accounts. 

RG2015

Thrugelmir said:

Credit card statements aren't the same as bank accounts. 

I don't understand the relevance of this comment. I do not believe that this is in question.

The OP is after a useable csv or equivalent. 

You can download transactions for a credit card in the same way that you can download transactions for a bank account.

You can also download a statement for a credit card in the same way you can download a statement for a bank account.

The title of the thread though is misleading, so I guess that may be your point.

pafpcg

And for those unfortunate enough to need to populate a spreadsheet with data but from a source that offers only PDFs, my suggestion is to use a PDF viewer which has a mode to convert the PDF contents to text so that the data required can be cut & pasted directly into a spreadsheet and then massaged into the required format.  I've used PDF-Exchange Viewer and I think many other PDF viewers offer the same facility.

Thrugelmir

RG2015 said:

Thrugelmir said:

Credit card statements aren't the same as bank accounts. 

I don't understand the relevance of this comment. I do not believe that this is in question.

The OP is after a useable csv or equivalent. 

You can download transactions for a credit card in the same way that you can download transactions for a bank account.

You can also download a statement for a credit card in the same way you can download a statement for a bank account.

The title of the thread though is misleading, so I guess that may be your point.

I read the OP's question as relating to the shared credit card.  Credit card systems differ to bank accounts. I know for a fact that RBS do not offer Corporate account credit card users an easy to use download option. 

RG2015

Thrugelmir said:

RG2015 said:

Thrugelmir said:

Credit card statements aren't the same as bank accounts. 

I don't understand the relevance of this comment. I do not believe that this is in question.

The OP is after a useable csv or equivalent. 

You can download transactions for a credit card in the same way that you can download transactions for a bank account.

You can also download a statement for a credit card in the same way you can download a statement for a bank account.

The title of the thread though is misleading, so I guess that may be your point.

I read the OP's question as relating to the shared credit card.  Credit card systems differ to bank accounts. I know for a fact that RBS do not offer Corporate account credit card users an easy to use download option. 

Yes, I see what you're saying.

I do not know about RBS corporate credit cards, but NatWest personal credit cards do have downloadable data and I would expect RBS to be the same.

Scooterza

RG2015 said:

I have just tried and you can download transactions from HSBC in CSV, OFX and QIF.

I have just downloaded mine in CSV and I get three columns, date, details and amount. I agree that it needs some tidying up. It is not as good as Santander and way behind NatWest.

NatWest gives you columns for 

Date, Type (ie DD), Description, Value, Balance, Account Name and Account Number.

You can also download all accounts at once (if you want) including credit card, current account and savings accounts.

Hi RG2015, could you give me some pointers on how you did this because I have tried and even contacted HSBC and was told categorically that this was impossible. Please note that I am aware that I can download the Midata information, but this is missing a ton of useful information so that is not really of much help. If you have any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. I will investigate further regarding Santander but that's what their call centre told me so 🤷‍♀️

Scooterza

pafpcg said:

And for those unfortunate enough to need to populate a spreadsheet with data but from a source that offers only PDFs, my suggestion is to use a PDF viewer which has a mode to convert the PDF contents to text so that the data required can be cut & pasted directly into a spreadsheet and then massaged into the required format.  I've used PDF-Exchange Viewer and I think many other PDF viewers offer the same facility.

Yes, a better way in Excel is to use Power Query. You go to the data tab, choose to get from file, then pick the PDF file and you can then import this into Excel directly. 

The problem with the HSBC statements is that they are never consistent. Some months page 1 has 5 columns and page 2 has 4. The next month page 1 will have 7 columns! It's exasperating that in this day and age, a bank doesn't offer customers the ability to download their statements in a "data friendly" format! I am looking at Santander, Natwest, HandelsBanken to see if we get what we need elsewhere. It's a pity as we are actually happy with HSBC other than this issue.