Effortless Bank Statement Conversion: Mastering PDF Extraction in 5 Simple Steps

Effortless Bank Statement Conversion: Mastering PDF Extraction in 5 Simple Steps

Learn how to convert bank statement to PDF effortlessly with our guide. Master the bank statement data extraction process in five simple steps using advanced tools like Docsumo. Improve efficiency, secure data storage, and simplify operations for financial institutions and businesses.

Converting bank statements to PDF format helps financial institutions interpret the information with less effort and store the data safely. However, manually converting them into PDFs can get overwhelming, mainly when employees process statements in batches.

Businesses now use data conversion software to convert statements to PDFs to improve efficiency and reduce errors. Automated data conversion software verifies, extracts, and validates the data from bank statements with 100% automation.

Understanding the need for converting bank statements to PDF

Bank statement analysis helps financial institutions and lending businesses streamline customer onboarding and loan application processes. Bank statements in PDF format give quick access to a customer's financial history with other necessary details.

Use cases of converting bank statements to PDF format

Loan applications processing

A Forbes study shows that over 68% of Americans applied for a personal loan last year. With loan applications increasing yearly, lenders use automated data extraction software to verify bank statements and documents such as payslips and tax reports.

Data extracted from various financial and identity documents in PDF format gives an overview of the borrower's economic history. This helps lenders speed up the loan approval processes by detecting fraud and sanctioning loans to deserving candidates.

Increase security and easy access

Bank statements in Excel, QFX, BAI2, and MT940 formats help streamline the reconciliation and accounting processes. However, bank statements in PDF format give easy access to all the information about every transaction with its date, amount, and description. Hence, banks and financial institutions use automated data capture software to convert bank statements to PDFs, thereby increasing the security of the documents.

Digital Record Keeping

Converting bank statements to PDF format helps businesses and enterprises keep digital records of their financial transactions. This facilitates more accessible storage, remote sharing, and enhanced data security. Moreover, they can quickly retrieve PDF bank statements and access historical economic data.

Accounting and Bookkeeping

Accounting and bookkeeping professionals convert bank statements to PDF to easily integrate financial data into their accounting software and streamline business operations. They import PDF bank statements into existing accounting systems to record and reconcile financial transactions and maintain books conveniently.

Auditing and compliance

Auditors and regulatory agencies demand bank statements in PDF format to conduct compliance audits efficiently. PDF statements ensure the integrity and security of financial data, improving audit trails and compliance processes and ensuring the business’s adherence to laws and regulations.

How to Prepare Bank Statements for Conversion?

An automated extraction software uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to read and capture data from bank statements. High quality of the input (bank statements) leads to greater accuracy in the extracted data. Hence, preparing and preprocessing these documents before feeding into the software is crucial.

Here are some techniques to streamline bank statement processing workflow and enhance the data quality of bank statements:

a. Organize bank statements

Collect bank statements from your mail or bank’s website and move them to a single folder. This facilitates easy ingestion into the conversion software, especially when you need to process bank statements in batches.

In the case of paper bank statements, retrieve documents and wipe off the dust. Scan them using a high-resolution scanner under good lighting for high quality. Move the scanned files to a folder for quick ingestion.

b. Binarization

The binarization process converts colored or grayscale documents into black and white pixels (pixel values 0 and 255, respectively). This helps the OCR to understand and differentiate the characters that need processing. Black pixels denote the texts requiring extraction, and white pixels are the background that doesn't need recognition.

c. Deskewing

Chances are high that the texts and characters get skewed (tilted at a certain angle) while scanning physical bank statements. Skew makes it difficult for OCR to read the document, resulting in inaccurate data.

The deskewing process removes the skew using Hough transformation, Topline, and Projection profile methods. The algorithm first detects texts and images that need skew correction. Then, it decides the skew angle to rotate the document clockwise or anticlockwise to fix the alignment.

d. Denoising

Denoising removes unwanted elements like blemishes, blurs, shadows, boxes, and lines from the documents. It also removes tiny dots with higher intensity so OCR does not identify them as characters.

e. Rescaling

Documents with 200-300 DPI (Dots Per Inch) are ideal for OCR engines to extract data accurately. DPI below 200 or above 600 produces inaccurate results, making the rescaling process indispensable for accurate data extraction.

f. Increase contrast and density

Another simple yet effective preprocessing step is increasing the contrast and density of the documents. Contrast and density are crucial factors that bring more clarity to the data.

How to Convert Bank Statements to PDF format Using Docsumo?

Free tools such as Sejda PDF, SmallPDF, and basic software solutions use OCR to extract data and convert bank statements to various formats. However, standalone OCR technology cannot capture data with 99% accuracy as it cannot adapt to variations in formatting and layout. As a result, businesses need to spend a lot of time manually creating templates and rules for OCR to extract specific fields.

Advanced software solutions like Docsumo integrate OCR with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to extract data from varying bank statement structures with an accuracy rate of 99%+.

Here's the step-by-step process to convert bank statements to PDF using Docsumo:

Step 1. Sign up on the Docsumo platform

Visit Docsumo's website and sign up for a free trial of Docsumo to process, extract, and convert 100 bank statements for free. Enter your name and work email address, and set a strong password.

Step 2. Upload Documents

Go to ‘Document type’ for various options, such as invoices, utility bills, bank statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets. Select “Bank Statements” and click ‘Upload’ to upload documents from your mail or computer.

Step 3. Edit the entries

After ingestion, the software starts processing the documents automatically without manual input.

Preprocessing

Docsumo preprocesses bank statements automatically to ensure they are free of noise and skew. Techniques such as denoising, zoning, deskewing, and binarization are used to improve data quality.

Data extraction

Docsumo’s pre-trained API models then extract data from the bank statements. First, it extracts key-value pairs, a set of two data items from the characters in the documents. Multiple key-value pairs provide the necessary information from the bank statements.

Some examples of key-value pairs that Docsumo extracts from bank statements include:

Docsumo then extracts data from the tables in the bank statements. Its deep learning algorithms extract line items from tables using neural and image segmentation networks to achieve over 95% field-level accuracy. You can customize these specific fields according to your data requirements while extracting data in batches.

Step 4. Validate Fields

The extracted data undergoes automatic validation to ensure accuracy and detect fraud. Docsumo compares captured data with existing databases to detect nuanced manipulation in bank statements.

For example, in loan application processing, Docsumo validates the extracted income data from bank statements with tax reports, salary slips, and expense bills.

Step 5. Review Suggestions

After data extraction and validation, Docsumo allows you to review each entry and ensure accuracy. Verify data manually before processing statements in batches to train the software to yield 99% accuracy. After reviewing, click on ‘Approve’ to save the document.

Step 6. Download the PDF document

Click “Download” and choose PDF format. You can also convert bank statements to Excel, JSON, CSV and other formats.

Step 7. Process multiple statements

Upload multiple documents simultaneously and extract data from them within 30-60 seconds.

Some benefits of automating data extraction from bank statements include:

Best practices for managing and storing your PDF bank statements

a. Security

Bank statements contain sensitive financial information, and exposure to such financial data can invite regulatory fines and penalties for financial institutions. Here are some tips for storing your PDF bank statements safely:

Role-based access

To avoid data reaching every employee, give role-based access to PDF bank statements and share it only with authorized personnel.

Cloud storage

Take advantage of cloud storage from your bank statement converter software and store all your bank statements on electronic servers.

Backup data

Backup data regularly for uninterrupted business operations in case of accidental file loss or system failure.

Data encryption

Encrypt your PDF bank statements to protect data from unauthorized access.

b. Data management

Naming conventions

Name every PDF file with the customer's name and date, and maintain consistency across files.

Create folders

Dedicate a folder to store various PDF documents of a customer, such as bank statements, tax reports, and balance sheets. This enables you to access the client's financial data instantly.

Why converting bank statements to PDF is essential

Bank statements in PDF format help businesses with easy access, enhanced security, and convenient archiving for future use.

With Docsumo, bank statement data conversion processes are automated, extracting data with a 99%+ accuracy rate. Make business decisions quickly as the software captures data in 30-60 seconds. The result? Improve your employees' productivity and streamline the document processing workflow.