How to turn a Chase statement into Excel or CSV

By Kayabyte · Last updated 28 October 2026

You need your Chase transactions in a spreadsheet, for budgeting, taxes, a loan application or bookkeeping. The data is on Chase’s website as statements, which are PDFs, and as account activity, which you can generally download as a file. Here is how to get from one to a clean Excel or CSV file, starting with the free options.

We are not affiliated with Chase, and the exact menu names on their site change, so treat the steps below as a guide to what to look for.

1. Try the activity download first

Chase lets you download account activity as CSV for recent transactions. In online banking, open the account and look for a download option near the activity list (labels like “Download account activity” are typical, but they change). You can usually pick a date range and a file type. Statements, by contrast, are PDF.

Things to know:

The range available for download is limited, so older months may only exist as PDF statements.
Credit card and checking exports can have different column layouts. Open the file and look at the headers before you use it.
Excel may read dates incorrectly. If day and month look swapped, check the date format of the column.
Debits and credits may be in one signed column or in two. Make sure your formulas account for the sign.

For a single year of recent activity, this is often all you need.

2. For older months: copy from the PDF statement

If the transactions you need are only in a PDF statement:

Open the PDF in Preview. If you can select text, it is a text PDF.
Select the transaction section, copy it and paste it into Excel or Numbers.
Split the pasted text into columns (the label for this varies by version of Excel, often called text to columns).
Remove the page headers, “continued” lines and any summary boxes that landed among the transactions.
Convert amounts to numbers. Check negative values: a trailing minus or parentheses may be pasted as text.

Statements from different years can look slightly different, so repeat the checks each time.

3. Check that it adds up

This step catches most mistakes. On the statement, find the opening balance, the closing balance, and the totals for deposits and withdrawals. In your sheet, add up the amounts and compare:

opening balance + deposits - withdrawals = closing balance

If the figures differ, a row was missed, duplicated or has the wrong sign. Statement pages that split a transaction across a page break are a common cause.

4. Where Balanced helps

Balanced is a Mac app we make for exactly this. Open your Chase PDF (or a scan, or a CSV) and it reads the table on your Mac; nothing is uploaded. There is no AI guessing: every number is copied from your statement and checked.

The preview shows the table it found. If a column role is wrong (date, description, debit, credit, amount, balance), change it. Check the date order (month/day or day/month) and the sign handling. Balanced remembers the layout for the next statement from the same bank.
The totals check compares opening balance plus transactions with the closing balance, and the running balance on each row if the statement has one. If it does not match, you see which rows and what difference, and exporting needs an explicit “Export anyway”.
Export to Excel (.xlsx) or CSV, or to OFX, QFX, QBO, QIF, YNAB CSV, Actual Budget, Lunch Money, Xero, Beancount or Ledger/hledger if your software wants one of those.

Download Balanced and convert for free: the free version converts and checks everything, and exports the first 10 transactions per file. Pro is USD 59 per year or USD 7.99 per month (up to 3 Macs, cancel anytime, 30-day money-back on the first payment). macOS 14 or later.

Limits to know: results depend on the layout, so look at the preview before you export. Heavily skewed or low-quality scans can fail. If the PDF is password-protected, unlock the PDF first with the password from your bank. We cannot promise every statement will parse; please test yours with the free version.

5. After the export

Open the Excel file and spot-check three or four transactions against the statement.
Keep the PDF with the spreadsheet, so you can show the source.
If you use accounting software, import the file with that program’s bank-file or CSV import. The exact menu labels vary by version. For QuickBooks, a QBO file normally imports as a bank file; Balanced has a bank id setting for it (default 3000).
This is a conversion tool, not accounting or tax advice.