Bank Reconciliation in Xero: Importing Statement Data

Reconciling in Xero means matching the lines that appear in a bank account inside Xero against the transactions you have already entered — invoices, bills, payments, and spend or receive money entries. If you are new to the concept itself, start with what a bank reconciliation is, then come back here for the Xero-specific side.

How reconciliation works in Xero

Xero shows each bank account on its own dashboard tile, and clicking through opens a reconciliation view. On one side you see the statement lines that have landed in the account; on the other, Xero suggests matches from the transactions already recorded in your books. For each statement line you either confirm a suggested match, find the right transaction manually, or create a new entry on the spot (for example, a bank fee or interest you had not yet recorded).

When a statement line and a book transaction agree on amount, date, and party, you accept the match and that line is reconciled. The goal is the same as any reconciliation: every line on the statement is accounted for in your books, and nothing in your books is left dangling.

The catch is that Xero can only match lines it actually has. Those statement lines have to get into Xero somehow. There are two ways that happens.

Getting statement data into Xero

The smoother route is a bank feed: a connection that pulls transactions from your bank into Xero automatically each day. When a feed is active for an account, statement lines appear without you doing anything, and you just reconcile them.

But not every account has a working feed. A feed may be unavailable for the bank or account type, it may not be set up yet, it might have dropped out and need reconnecting, or you may be reconciling an older period that predates the feed. In those cases you need to bring the statement data in yourself.

Importing statement transactions from a CSV

Xero accepts a manual import of statement transactions for a bank account. The exact wording and location of this option change over time and can differ between accounts, so rather than quoting a fixed menu path, look on the relevant bank account for an option to import a statement or import transactions. Xero will ask for a file — typically a CSV (or a supported statement format) — and then walk you through mapping the columns in your file to the fields it expects: the transaction date, the amount, and a description, with debits and credits handled either as one signed amount column or as separate columns depending on how your data is laid out.

Once imported, those lines behave just like fed-in lines. They show up in the reconciliation view, Xero suggests matches against your existing entries, and you reconcile them the same way.

A few things worth getting right before you import:

• Date format. Australian statements are usually DD/MM/YYYY. Make sure the format in your file matches what Xero expects during the column-mapping step, or dates can be read incorrectly.
• One amount convention. Decide whether money in and money out are a single signed column or two separate columns, and keep it consistent down the whole file.
• No duplicate periods. If a date range was already brought in via a feed or an earlier import, importing it again creates duplicate statement lines.
• Headers and stray rows. Remove running balances, sub-totals, and blank separator rows so every imported line is a real transaction.

Where the CSV comes from

If you bank online, you can often export a CSV directly from internet banking, and that file can go straight into the import step above. The harder case is when all you have is a PDF statement — a downloaded e-statement or a scanned copy. Xero will not read a PDF as statement data, so the PDF has to become a CSV first.

That conversion is exactly what a bank statement converter is for: it reads the transaction rows out of a PDF statement and gives you back a structured CSV with date, description, and amount columns. We cover the full process, including how to clean the file afterwards, in how to convert a bank statement to CSV.

After conversion, open the CSV and check it before importing:

1. Confirm the columns line up — date, description, and amount(s) — and that nothing has shifted.
2. Spot-check a handful of rows against the original PDF for amounts and dates.
3. Delete any header, footer, balance, or summary rows that are not transactions.
4. Save it as CSV ready for Xero's import step.

Putting it together

The reconciliation work in Xero is the matching: confirming each statement line against the right entry in your books and creating entries for anything the bank did that you had not recorded. None of that can start until the statement lines are present. With a bank feed they arrive on their own; without one, you import them.

So the practical workflow for an account with no feed is: get the statement as a CSV — exporting from internet banking if you can, or converting the PDF if that is all you have — tidy the file, import it against the bank account in Xero, and then reconcile the imported lines against your books as usual.

If your business is doing this regularly, keeping a clean copy of each converted statement alongside your records is good practice. The ATO expects businesses to retain records that support what is reported, and a tidy CSV per period is easy to file. See the ATO guidance on record keeping for business.