Sparkasse Statement to Excel Converter

Sparkassen must store account movements for ten years, and the Sparkasse guide says your adviser can provide statements for that whole period — for a fee. Self-employed people and businesses have to keep the statements of business accounts for at least ten years themselves; for private individuals the guide recommends at least three years, and six years once annual income exceeds EUR 500,000.

Reordered statements arrive as documents. Whether they come from the Postfach, from your adviser or from a folder of saved PDFs, FlowParse reads them the same way, proves each against its balances, and puts them in one sheet.

A Jahresabschluss, an EÜR, a Steuererklärung or a Kreditantrag usually needs a whole year, often from a Girokonto, a Geschäftskonto and a Kreditkarte. Smart Merge takes up to 100 Sparkasse PDFs and builds one workbook with every booking in date order, the source file on every row, and a check that each statement's new balance is the next one's old balance — so a missing Auszug shows up as a break.

Statements from Volksbanken, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, ING or DKB can go into the same workbook, matched column by column.

In Germany, Steuerberater work mostly in DATEV, and small businesses commonly use Lexware, lexoffice or sevDesk. All of them import bank movements from a file. FlowParse exports a CSV with Buchungstag, Wertstellung, text and signed amount that fits a bank import, an Excel file for checking first, and a DATEV-ready layout for the Steuerberater.

Because the full booking text is kept — counterparty, IBAN, Verwendungszweck, Mandatsreferenz on a Lastschrift — each line can still be matched to its invoice after the import.

A Kontoauszug saved from the Elektronisches Postfach carries real text — FlowParse reads it directly and every amount is what the bank printed. Statements from the Kontoauszugsdrucker in the branch are paper; scan them flat and straight, and FlowParse converts them through OCR, but a PDF from the Postfach is always the cleaner source.

Upload each Auszug as one file so the proof can run from the old to the new balance. Save them from the Postfach as they arrive — at some Sparkassen they disappear 90 days after an account is closed.

German number formats come first: 1.234,56 is text in an English-locale spreadsheet, and 03.04. is easily read as March 4th. FlowParse reads figures and dates the German way and writes real numbers and dates. Second, the booking text: a SEPA-Lastschrift with Gläubiger-ID, Mandatsreferenz and Verwendungszweck runs over several lines and, copied by hand, becomes several rows. FlowParse keeps one booking per row.

Third, statement numbering: Sparkasse statements are numbered per year, and a printer in the branch, the Postfach and a reorder can leave you with overlapping or missing numbers. Smart Merge chains the statements by balance, not by number, so a gap is a gap whatever the numbering says.

A freelance designer prepares the Einnahmen-Überschuss-Rechnung for the year. Their Sparkasse statements are partly in the Postfach and partly printed at the branch in the spring, before they switched to online statements. The figures here are an illustration, not a real person's.

The printed statements are scanned, the rest are saved from the Postfach, and all of them are uploaded together. Each statement is proved against its own balances; each new balance matches the next old balance, so the overlap between the printed and the online statements is visible and nothing is counted twice. Filtering the Verwendungszweck for client names gives the year's income, and the CSV goes to the Steuerberater in a format DATEV can import.

Before you rely on converted Sparkasse statements, check four things. Coverage: every Auszug in the period, chained by balance — Smart Merge flags any break, including one hidden by overlapping statement numbers. Dates: for bookkeeping, the Buchungstag is the date the balance follows; keep the Wertstellung for interest and for bookings at the year end.

The reconciled mark: every statement proved against its own balances before you use the totals. And keep the PDFs: the signed electronic statement is the original, the converted file is a working copy — and for a business, the retention period is ten years.

The Kontoauszug for a Girokonto or Geschäftskonto is the main one, and statements for savings accounts and loans have the same shape. Credit card statements from the Sparkasse convert as a list of purchases and the settlement against the previous and new balance — worth saving promptly, since some Sparkassen keep them in the Postfach for only 365 days.

Securities statements, the Jahressteuerbescheinigung and the Entgeltaufstellung summarise rather than list movements. They are references for the tax return, not inputs for a bank reconciliation. Keep them with the statements; convert the Kontoauszüge.