Bank statement PDF to Wave

How to get a PDF bank statement into Wave

1. Download the PDF statement from online banking. Statements downloaded from your bank are text-based and convert cleanly; scans and phone photos aren't supported yet.
2. Upload it above. We read every transaction and check it against the statement's opening and closing balance. You see the result, and the first transactions, before you pay anything.
3. Unlock and download the OFX or the Wave CSV. One credit covers every format of that statement, so you can try both.
4. Upload it to Wave (steps below), then reconcile the account in Wave against the same statement.

OFX or CSV: which file to upload

Wave's uploader takes OFX, QBO, QFX and ASO files, or a CSV, and not PDFs. Wave's help says the first four "are easier to import into Wave than a .CSV file" (Wave: Upload bank and credit card statements; Wave: CSV uploads).

What's in the Wave CSV

The first rows of our sample bank statement (business checking ending 0427) come out as:

Date,Description,Amount
2026-09-01,ACH DEBIT GUSTO PAYROLL 0912,-6420.18
2026-09-01,STRIPE TRANSFER ST-K2M8Q4,3184.27
2026-09-02,CHECK 2041,-1850.00

And the sample credit card statement, where Wave wants purchases positive and payments negative:

Date,Description,Amount
2026-09-01,GOOGLE *WORKSPACE CC@GOOGLE.COM,72.00
2026-09-02,DELTA AIR LINES 0062 ATLANTA GA,418.60
...
2026-09-05,PAYMENT THANK YOU - WEB,-1500.00

How it lines up with Wave's CSV rules (Wave: what to do if Wave can't read your CSV):

• Three columns: date, amount, description. Wave accepts three or four, and says extra columns can stop the upload, so there's no Balance, Type or second date column.
• Dates as YYYY-MM-DD, one of the two numeric layouts Wave's help lists (YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY-MM-DD). Dates can't be in the future, and statement dates never are.
• One signed Amount column with a minus sign and no currency symbol or thousands separator. On a bank statement money out is negative. On a credit card statement the signs are the other way round, because Wave's help says card purchases must be positive and payments negative.
• Descriptions always contain words. Wave rejects a description of only numbers, so a bare reference like 1234 is written as Ref 1234. Commas and quotes become spaces.
• No balance or total rows (Wave's help says balance totals can cause a generic error), and short file names, because Wave can reject a long one.

Want to see the files before uploading anything? Download the sample statement's Wave CSV and OFX (fictional bank, 31 transactions, 12,418.36 → 13,440.52), or the credit card Wave CSV and OFX. Upload samples only into a test business in Wave, never into your real books. More test files are in free sample bank statement files.

Uploading the file in Wave

1. Make sure the account exists: Wave uploads into a payment account, so add the bank or credit card account under Chart of Accounts first if it isn't there. The account's currency has to match the statement.
2. Go to Accounting → Transactions, click More at the top right and choose Upload transactions.
3. Choose the OFX or CSV file and select the Payment account, then click Upload.
4. Confirm the date, the amounts and the description column. With a single date and amount column, Wave picks them for you.
5. Click Upload my statement. The transactions appear on the Transactions page, ready to categorize.

Steps from Wave's upload help and CSV upload help, read Oct 24, 2026. Connected to the bank already? Wave's help says to turn off the account's transaction imports first if you upload statements by hand (Wave), and upload only months that aren't in the account yet.

Why the PDF is often the only way in: Wave's pricing page lists auto-import of bank transactions as a Pro plan feature ($19 USD a month or $190 a year when checked), and not every bank connects (Wave pricing). On the Starter plan, for months before a connection, or for a closed account, the statement PDF is usually what you have.

Common Wave upload errors

We built these files to Wave's published rules but haven't uploaded them into a live Wave business ourselves yet. Check Wave's Confirm import screen on your first upload, and tell us at support@version1.io if anything doesn't come through right.

Other formats from the same statement

• Excel or Google Sheets: the CSV with a Balance column (PDF to Excel).
• Moving from Wave to QuickBooks or Xero? The same results page has a .QBO and .IIF (PDF to QuickBooks) and a Xero CSV (PDF to Xero).
• Sage, FreeAgent or GnuCash: the same OFX (PDF to OFX). Already have a bank CSV? The free CSV to OFX converter makes an OFX for Wave without a credit for files up to 100 rows.