CommBank Statement to Excel Converter

In the CommBank app: Accounts, choose the account, tap the settings cog or Manage Account, then Statement preferences, Online, Next and Confirm. In NetBank: Settings, then Statement preferences under Accounts, choose the account, Online, Next and Confirm. CommBank emails you when a new statement is available.

From the switch onward, the archive builds itself; earlier periods are on paper. Paper statements convert too — scan them flat, one per file, and FlowParse reads them through OCR and proves them against their printed balances.

A CommBank statement gives the account name, BSB and account number, the statement period and the opening balance, then the transactions — a direct credit with the payer, a BPAY payment with its biller, a transfer to another bank, a card purchase, an account fee — each with a debit or credit amount and the balance. The closing balance ends it.

FlowParse writes one row per transaction with the date, the full description and one signed amount in AUD, decided by the column, so the amount column sums to the change in balance.

The opening balance plus every signed transaction must equal the closing balance. FlowParse checks that on every CommBank statement, and checks each row against the running balance where it is printed. A credit read as a debit, or a line lost at a page break, fails at the row where it happened.

Statements that pass are marked reconciled; anything else is shown in the preview with the difference and the rows around it.

In CommBiz, statements live under Accounts, Online Statements, Single Statement: choose Account Statements, the period and the account, then Search, and open or download each statement. Merchant statements and corporate card statements sit in the same place. A user needs View permission for the account; otherwise the Administrator grants it.

For a bookkeeper with View permission, that means pulling a quarter of statements directly and converting them, rather than asking the business owner for a folder of PDFs.

The Australian financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June, and BAS is lodged by quarter. Smart Merge takes up to 100 CommBank PDFs — everyday, savings, business, credit card — and builds one workbook in date order with the account and source on every row, chaining each closing balance to the next opening balance. Filter to the quarter or the financial year after the merge.

Statements from Westpac, ANZ, NAB or Bendigo can be merged into the same workbook, matched column by column.

Australian bookkeepers and small businesses mostly work in Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks Online. FlowParse exports a CSV for Xero's or MYOB's bank import, a QBO file for QuickBooks, and an Excel file for review first.

The description stays whole — the payer on a direct credit, the biller on a BPAY payment — so each line can be matched and coded after import, including for GST.

Debits and credits are unsigned columns; pasted into one list, they all become positive. An Australian date like 03/04/2025 is the 3rd of April, and an American-default spreadsheet makes it March 4th. A long transfer description wraps over two lines and becomes two rows.

FlowParse signs by column, writes unambiguous dates and keeps one transaction per row; the balance proof confirms nothing was split or dropped.

An executor is settling a parent's estate. The parent's CommBank everyday account was closed fourteen months ago, and the accountant preparing the final tax return needs its last financial year. The figures here are an illustration, not a real family's.

With authority from CommBank, the executor saves the closed account's statements while they are still inside the two-year window, adds the savings account's statements, and uploads them. FlowParse returns one workbook, each statement proved, both accounts chained. The pension credits, the interest and the final transfer to the estate account are filtered in a minute; the PDFs go into the estate file as the record.

Coverage: each closing balance equal to the next opening balance, per account. Closed accounts: downloaded inside the two-year window and included. Period: the quarter or financial year filtered after the merge. Reconciled: every statement proved before its totals are used.

And keep the PDFs. The converted file is a working copy; the statement is the record for the ATO, a lender or a court.

Everyday, savings, business and credit card statements list transactions between two balances and convert the same way. CommBiz account statements convert the same way too.

Term deposit e-notices, interest summaries, merchant statements of card takings and letters are notices or summaries rather than lists of account transactions. Keep them with the file; convert the statements.

CommBank's own pitch for online statements is that they are easy to save, print and email. Use that: when the email arrives saying a new statement is available, save the PDF into a folder per account and year. It costs a minute a month.

That folder outlives both of CommBank's windows — the seven years for open accounts and the two years after closing — and it is exactly what FlowParse needs. At year end, upload the folder and get one proved workbook instead of an evening of logging in and retyping.

When a month seems to be missing, the balance chain answers the question. If one statement's closing balance equals the next statement's opening balance, nothing is missing between them, even if the dates look uneven. If they differ, a statement is missing, and Smart Merge shows exactly where.

That matters for accounts that only produce statements periodically, and for histories rebuilt from a mix of NetBank downloads and old paper. Fill the gap — from NetBank, a paper copy or a request to CommBank — and convert again until the chain is complete.