Analyzing your bank statements means answering a few plain questions: how much came in, where it went, what changed, and whether anything looks wrong. We know the troubling part is rarely the questions. It is the tedious work of getting the transactions out of a PDF and into something you can sort and total. If your bank’s app shows you a balance and a list, and nothing else, your statements are still enough.
This post covers what to look for, then three ways to get there.
Many banks still don’t have analysis tools
Some banks offer built-in analysis tools to track your spending, income, and so on. However, there are still many banking apps that show a balance and a list of transactions, and nothing more: no charts, no categories, no monthly totals.
In addition, for people with bank accounts at different banks, each bank account’s data is still separated. Putting them together and analyzing an overall financial situation would be a nightmare and a lot of manual work.
Before you start
- Gather three to twelve months. One month shows a snapshot. Several show what is normal and what is not.
- Download the PDFs from your online banking. These have text in them. A scanned or photographed page is a picture, and most tools read it badly or not at all.
What to look for
- Money in against money out, month by month. The simplest sign of whether things are getting better or worse.
- Spending by category. Groceries, rent, transport, eating out. The categories that surprise you are the ones worth watching.
- Recurring payments. Subscriptions and memberships you may have forgotten.
- Anything you do not recognize. Unfamiliar merchants, fees and charges that appear twice or more.
Option 1: a spreadsheet
Copy the transactions from the PDF into Excel or Google Sheets, one row each,
with the date, description, amount and balance. Add a category column and fill
it in, then use a pivot table or SUMIFS to total by category and month.
It is free and you keep full control. It is also slow. Copying from a PDF often splits rows or merges columns, so check each statement’s last balance against the one printed on the page before you trust any total.
Option 2: an online converter
A converter website takes your PDF and gives back a spreadsheet, usually in seconds. For one statement, that is the quickest route.
The catch is where your statement goes. You send the whole document, with your name, address and account number, to someone else’s server. What happens to it there depends on the site, so read its privacy policy first. You also still do the categorizing and totaling yourself, one file at a time.
Option 3: LocoLedger
LocoLedger is a Windows app that reads your PDF bank statements into one ledger on your computer. It reads the table of transactions on the statement itself, so it is not limited to a list of banks. It works best with statements in English.
- Add your statements. Each one is copied into LocoLedger’s folder, and your original stays exactly where it is. Each statement is checked against its own running balance, so a misread amount is flagged for you instead of slipping into a total.
- Open the Ledger. Every transaction from your statements is in one list. Filter by account, dates, category, or money in and out, and the totals follow your filters.
- File your categories. You choose them, and you can file many transactions at once. When a description matches one you filed before, LocoLedger suggests the same category. It never files anything on its own.
With a new bank, read the descriptions once yourself. If you want the result in Excel, Settings → Export → Transactions saves a CSV file with your categories included.
The bank statement analyzer page shows the Ledger in more detail, and the bank statement converter page covers getting your statements into a spreadsheet.
Asking Claude or ChatGPT
Some questions are easier to ask than to filter for. If you connect Claude or ChatGPT, you can ask in plain language, and it sees only the level you allow:
- “Am I spending more than last year?” Monthly summaries are enough.
- “Which subscriptions am I still paying?” Your AI needs payee names for this, either real ones or names replaced.
Your AI never receives your statements at any level, only values from the statements. You get to choose how much it can view and analyze for you. The five levels of what your AI can see goes through each level.
Which one to pick
- One statement, once: a spreadsheet, or a converter you trust.
- Your bank shows you no breakdown at all: a spreadsheet, or LocoLedger, working from the statements you already have.
- Every month, across several accounts: something that keeps them together, so you are not starting over each time.
LocoLedger runs on Windows 10 and 11. Download it and try it on your own statements.