Accountants lose more time to missing and jumbled statements than to the sums themselves. If you do this in December rather than the week before a deadline, you can send a complete, checked set: every account, every month, in a form your accountant can use straight away. Here is the order to do it in.
Why start in December
Banks, accountants and you are all busier from January. In the US, tax season runs from January to April; in the UK, self-assessment returns are due by the end of January. Starting in December gives you time to request any statement you cannot download, which can take days or weeks, and it means your accountant receives a complete set rather than a trickle of attachments.
You do not need the December statement to start. Gather January to November now, then add December when it arrives.
Step 1: list every account
Write down every account that had money moving through it during the year, including ones that are easy to forget:
- current and checking accounts, personal and business;
- savings accounts and savings "pots" inside a banking app;
- credit cards, including store cards;
- PayPal, Stripe, Wise or similar balances, if you used them for income or business spending;
- loans and overdrafts, if your accountant needs interest figures;
- any account you opened or closed during the year.
Ask your accountant which of these they actually want. A sole trader may need only the business account and the card used for business costs; a personal tax return may need interest from savings. Getting the list agreed first saves converting statements nobody needs.
Step 2: collect twelve months for each account
For each account, download the statements covering the whole tax year from online banking: the statements or documents section usually holds the PDFs. Our guide on how to extract a bank statement covers where to look and how to export transactions directly as CSV, which is better than converting a PDF whenever the bank offers it.
Statement periods rarely match calendar months. A "January" statement may run from 15 December to 14 January. Collect enough statements to cover the first and last day of the tax year, even if that means one statement either side.
Name files so they sort: 2026-01 business current.pdf, 2026-02 business current.pdf, and so on. For anything you cannot download, such as a closed account or a year beyond the online archive, ask the bank now; the guide to old bank statements explains how. If a statement PDF is locked, the password-protected statement guide explains how to open it.
Step 3: check that nothing is missing
This is the step that saves your accountant the most time. Make a small table with one row per statement: account, period start, period end, opening balance, closing balance.
Two checks:
- Dates. Each statement should start the day after the previous one ended. A gap means a missing statement.
- Balances. Each statement's opening balance should equal the previous statement's closing balance. In a spreadsheet with closing balances in column E and opening balances in column D, put =D3-E2 in row 3 and fill down: every row should show zero.
A break in either chain means a missing statement, a statement from a different account in the wrong folder, or a misread figure. Fix it now, while you can still ask the bank.
Step 4: convert the statements to one spreadsheet
Most accountants prefer transactions in a spreadsheet or an accounting import file over a folder of PDFs. If your bank's CSV export covers the year, use that. Otherwise convert the PDFs.
On the bank statement converter, you can upload up to 12 files and 40 pages in one job, which fits a year of monthly statements for one account if they total 40 pages or fewer. Run one job per account. Each PDF is treated as its own statement. They come back in one Excel workbook with a Statement column, plus a summary row for each statement showing whether it reconciles: opening balance plus money in minus money out equals the closing balance, checked in whole cents. Rows where a printed running balance breaks are flagged.
As an example of cost: twelve three-page statements are 36 pages. With today's two free pages unused, that is 34 paid pages, or 170 credits, and every download of the job is then included. The $12 pack of 280 credits covers it with 110 credits left over, and credits never expire. A statement that will not reconcile tells you by how much, so you know which month to look at.
If your accountant uses particular software, send the file it imports: a QuickBooks Online or Xero CSV, a QBO file for QuickBooks Desktop, or the workbook for everything else.
Step 5: mark what your accountant will ask about
Add a Notes column to the workbook and annotate before sending, not after the questions arrive:
- transfers between your own accounts, so they are not counted as income or spending twice;
- large deposits that are not income: loans, gifts, refunds, sale of personal items;
- business expenses paid from a personal account, and personal spending on a business card;
- anything you do not recognise, so it can be queried with the bank.
Your accountant will still categorise and check everything, but notes on the unusual items turn a series of emails into one.
Step 6: send it safely
Send statements through your accountant's client portal or secure upload if they have one, rather than as email attachments. If you must email, send a single zipped folder and give any password by phone or text, not in the same email. Keep your own copy of everything you sent, and delete downloaded copies and converted results you no longer need; on Sonomir, the Delete this result button removes a result immediately.
If there is too much to do yourself
For a large batch, or scans that need a person to look at them, the done-for-you service converts and reconciles statements by hand: $1 a page with a $20 minimum, quoted before any work starts, and returned within two business days. Every statement comes back either balancing to the cent or with the difference explained. Email the number of statements, the rough page count, the bank and the format you need; do not attach anything until you have the quote.
Questions
- Which bank statements does my accountant need?
- Usually every account with activity during the tax year, for the full year. Ask them to confirm, especially for savings accounts, credit cards and payment services such as PayPal.
- Is a spreadsheet better than PDFs for my accountant?
- Usually, yes, because the transactions can be sorted and imported. Keep the PDFs too, as the official record, and send them if asked.
- How do I know if a statement is missing?
- Line up the statements by date. Each should start the day after the previous one ended, and its opening balance should equal the previous closing balance.
- How much does converting a year of statements cost here?
- Two pages a day are free. Beyond that, pages are 5 credits each, $0.15–$0.30 depending on the pack. Twelve three-page statements need 170 credits after the free pages; the $12 pack covers that.
- Can someone convert the statements for me?
- Yes. The done-for-you service costs $1 a page with a $20 minimum, quoted first, and returns reconciled files within two business days.