Kayabyte

Help: Balanced

Last updated: 29 October 2026

Setup and common questions. If something here doesn’t solve it, email support@kayabyte.dev with your Balanced and macOS versions (Balanced, About Balanced). Please don’t send us your statements; a description, or a screenshot with the private details covered, is enough.

How to convert a statement

  1. Open Balanced and drag in a statement (PDF, scanned PDF, image or CSV), or click “Add Files” (⌘O). A whole folder works too.
  2. Look at the preview table. Each column has a role: date, description, debit, credit, amount or balance.
  3. Check the totals check at the top. If it passes, the transactions add up to the statement’s closing balance.
  4. Click Export, choose the format and save. With several files, “Export All…” saves one file per statement into a folder. The free version exports the first 10 transactions per file.

Fix the columns

If a column is labeled wrongly, or two columns were read as one, change the role of that column in the preview. The table and the totals check update straight away. Common fixes:

Balanced remembers your fix for that bank’s layout. Next month’s statement from the same bank opens with the same setup.

Date order

A date such as 03/04/2026 is 3 April in most of the world and March 4 in the United States. Balanced picks the most likely order from the whole statement (a date like 25/04 settles it), but when every date is ambiguous you should check the first rows and switch the date order if needed. Statements with written month names (3 Apr, 3 April, 3. april) are not ambiguous.

Credit card statements

Card statements often show purchases as positive numbers and payments as negative, the opposite of a bank account. Turn on “Card statement (flip signs)” in the Columns bar so that purchases export as money out. The totals check tells you whether you got it right: for a card, previous balance + purchases - payments = new balance.

If the totals only add up with money in and money out swapped, Balanced flips the signs itself and says so in a yellow note. Check a few lines: spending should be negative.

When the totals don’t match

Balanced shows the difference and the rows involved. Check, in this order:

  1. A column role or sign is wrong (a debit read as a credit makes the difference twice the amount).
  2. Date order: not a cause of a mismatch by itself, but check it while you are there.
  3. A missing page: the statement is split across files, or a page is missing. Open all pages together.
  4. A row Balanced didn’t recognize: a wrapped line or a fee line at a page break. Look at the rows around the first difference.
  5. Scanned statement: digits can be misread (a 3 read as an 8). Compare the flagged rows with the original.

If the check still fails and you are sure the statement is right, you can still export with “Export Anyway…”. Balanced shows the difference first so you know what you are importing.

Scanned statements

Scans are read with Apple’s text recognition on your Mac. Straight, sharp, high-contrast scans work best (200 to 300 dpi). A photo taken at an angle, or a faint copy, may produce wrong digits; the totals check will usually catch that. A PDF protected with a password has to be unlocked first, with the password from your bank.

QuickBooks: “unable to verify financial institution”

QuickBooks checks a bank ID inside a QBO file. If QuickBooks says it is unable to verify the financial institution, change “Bank id (INTU.BID)” in the export window (the default is 3000) and export again. QuickBooks versions differ in what they accept; if one number doesn’t work, try the ID your QuickBooks suggests or our QBO guide.

Import steps

The exact menu labels in other programs change between versions; if a label here doesn’t match, look for the import option on the account.

Licence

Still stuck?

Email support@kayabyte.dev. If a bank’s statement doesn’t convert correctly, tell us the bank and what looks wrong; fixes to layouts are how Balanced gets better.