How to convert a bank statement photo or screenshot to Excel

• A paper statement and no scanner. The bank posted it, and a phone is the only camera nearby.
• A banking app that only shows a screen. Some apps list transactions but offer no PDF export for the period you need.
• Pictures someone sent you. A client, a tenant or a relative photographs their statement and sends it over.

If you can download the statement as a PDF from online banking, do that instead: a text PDF is read exactly, with no OCR. See how to convert a bank statement PDF to Excel. If you have a scanned PDF rather than pictures, see how to convert a scanned bank statement to Excel.

A photo is read with OCR, which turns the picture into characters. OCR reads clear, flat, well-lit, straight pages best. Every shortcut you take with the camera shows up as misread digits. Before you shoot:

1. 01Lay the page flat on a dark, plain surface. Flatten folds; a curled page bends the rows.
2. 02Use even light. Daylight from a window, no flash, and no shadow from your phone or hand across the numbers.
3. 03Hold the phone straight above the page, parallel to it, not at an angle. Skewed photos read worse.
4. 04Fill the frame with one page. All four edges in shot, nothing else around it.
5. 05Hold still and let it focus. Tap on the transaction table. A blurry photo is the most common reason OCR misreads amounts.
6. 06Check the photo before you move on. Zoom in on a few amounts. If you can't read them easily, neither can OCR.

For screenshots: capture the transaction list at your screen's full size, don't crop through rows, and scroll so each screenshot overlaps the last one by a line or two rather than leaving a gap.

iPhones save photos as HEIC by default. Signavos accepts PNG, JPG and WebP, not HEIC. Two ways round it:

• Change the camera format once: Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible. New photos are saved as JPG.
• Convert the photo you already have: share it to Files or email it to yourself as JPG, or export it as JPG from your computer.

Screenshots are already PNG on iPhone and Android, so they upload as they are.

When you upload several pictures together, Signavos converts each picture separately: every picture gets its own preview, its own balance check and its own downloads, and costs one credit. Three pictures give three files.

• Keep the running balance in the shot. The check compares each row with the balance printed next to it, so a picture that shows the balance column can be verified on its own.
• Up to 30 pictures per upload, in any order.

1. 01Create a free account or sign in.
2. 02Open Statements in the dashboard and choose Convert pictures.
3. 03Add your pictures, PNG, JPG or WebP. Each one becomes its own statement.
4. 04Wait for OCR to read every picture. It runs on Signavos's own servers; no third-party OCR service sees your pictures.
5. 05Check the free preview. Every row is labelled Read by OCR, and each page shows whether its rows tie out to the printed balances.
6. 06Convert with credits and download Excel (XLSX), CSV, or OFX/QBO for accounting software.

The original pictures are never stored. The conversion and its files are deleted automatically after 24 hours.

A photo is the hardest input a converter gets, so treat the output as a draft until it is checked. Two things do that for you:

• The balance check. Opening balance plus every transaction must reach each running balance printed on the page. Rows that disagree are marked red. Pages that fail are not charged, and scanned pages with nothing to verify them against are free.
• The "Read by OCR" label, on the preview, on every OCR row of the Excel file, and on the conversion certificate. CSV, OFX and QBO files carry no label, so they import cleanly.

If a page fails, retake that photo with better light and a straighter angle and convert again. What goes wrong with OCR, and why, is covered in is OCR accurate for bank statements?