For bookkeepers
New client onboarding, a broken bank feed, or a bank that only goes back 90 days online. All three end the same way: a stack of PDFs and an evening.
Last updated September 9, 2026
The three moments this comes up
Onboarding
A new client arrives with twelve or twenty-four months of statements to get into the books before you can start. Feeds don't backfill that far, so it's manual, for every account they hold.
A feed breaks
The connection drops, or the bank changes its login, and three weeks of transactions never arrive. You need those weeks from the PDF, in the same format the feed would have delivered.
A bank with no feed
Small credit unions, regional banks, business accounts on older platforms. There is no integration coming; there is a PDF every month, forever.
What you get here
Convert to QBO and the transactions land in QuickBooks' review queue the way a feed would have delivered them: same workflow, same matching, same rules you have already set up. Or OFX for Xero, CSV for anything else. Formats and import steps.
Every file is balance-checked first, which is what makes this bearable at volume. You don't proofread twenty statements; you look at twenty badges, then open the two with flags.
Per-client math
A year of statements for one account is typically 25-50 pages. At Pro pricing ($29 for 300 pages) that is roughly $2.50 to $5 per client-year, from a pack that never expires. Onboard four clients this month and two next quarter out of the same $29.
There is no per-client licensing and no seat fee. If you would rather have a predictable monthly cost, Practice is $19 a month for 200 pages with rollover; if not, page packs carry no subscription at all. Pricing.
A day that looks like this
- New client, 3 accounts, 18 months each. Around 90 pages total.
- Work through them account by account. Native PDFs run in 10-60 seconds each; the six scanned months take about half a minute a page.
- Sort by badge. 5 files have flagged rows, all scans, all one or two rows each.
- Fix those rows against the PDFs. Fifteen minutes, not an evening.
- Download QBO per account, import into each QuickBooks account.
- Total: about $8.70 in credits from a $29 pack you bought once. The rest carries to the next client.
Illustrative walkthrough; the prices are ours, the client is made up.
How to plan the work
- Ask the client for the bank's own PDF download before accepting a scan. Scans read more slowly and are the files that pick up flagged rows. Scans and photos.
- Expect card statements to come back with the closing total checked rather than every line, because most issuers print no running balance. The badge tells you which, so sort by badge and give those a closer read. Details.
- One statement per conversion, so budget a minute of attention per statement rather than one upload for the year. A Practice or Firm plan carries any number of people on one subscription.
- Buy the pack once and draw it down across clients. Pages do not expire, so an onboarding month and a quiet month come out of the same purchase.
The reason a feed stops at ninety days, and what to do about the months behind it, is in the QuickBooks Online 90-day limit.
Convert one and see
Three pages a day are free, and you don't need an account to run your own statement through it.