How to check dates in a converted bank statement

Read the bank's date convention before reading the spreadsheet

Dates are one of the easiest fields to make plausible but wrong. A statement marked 05/06 can mean 5 June or 6 May depending on the issuing bank, the account's country setting and the statement layout. Do not infer the convention from a file name or a single transaction.

First identify a row that includes a written month, a known salary date or another independently verifiable event. Use it to establish whether the source follows day-month-year, month-day-year or a mixed presentation. Keep that conclusion with the review record for the period.

Review checklist

• Confirm the statement period
• Find one independently known transaction date
• Record the source date convention before export

Separate posting dates from transaction dates

A card purchase may happen on one day and appear on the statement on another. Banks can show a transaction date, posting date, value date or settlement date. These are useful for different accounting and reconciliation decisions, but they should not be silently treated as interchangeable.

If the source only provides one date, preserve that source date. If it provides more than one, decide which field your downstream system expects and keep the other date available in the original statement or a review note. Do not invent a time of day where the statement does not provide one.

Test the boundaries of the statement period

Review the first three and last three transactions, not just a row from the middle. Month-end and weekend transactions are where pending entries, carried balances and delayed postings most often create apparent gaps or overlaps between consecutive statements.

When importing into accounting software, a date that shifts into a different month can distort VAT, reporting and reconciliation. Compare the exported date range with the PDF statement period before creating an OFX file or categorising any transactions.

Review checklist

• Check the first and last three transaction rows
• Look specifically at month-end entries
• Confirm the exported range does not include a neighbouring period

Resolve ambiguity before matching or posting

If a date cannot be verified from the source, mark it as an exception rather than guessing. A corrected amount with the wrong month can still cause a duplicate match or a misleading financial report. The safest result is a smaller reviewed dataset, not a complete-looking dataset with uncertain dates.

Keep the original PDF and any reviewer correction together. The File Workshop's conversion output is designed to help make this comparison quicker; it does not replace the bank-issued document or professional judgement.