PDF to OFX converter

An OFX file is plain text. Open one in a text editor and you see a short header followed by tagged blocks: who produced the file, which account it belongs to, the list of transactions and the balance. This is a shortened version of what FlowParse writes for a two-line checking account statement:

The file uses OFX version 1.0.2 in its SGML form — the version that Web Connect downloads use, and the one that GnuCash, Moneydance, Banktivity and most other apps still read most reliably. It is written without a byte-order mark on purpose: a BOM in front of OFXHEADER:100 makes many importers reject the file as unreadable.

Two fields are worth knowing about before you import. The payee is limited to 32 characters by the format, so a long line such as a card purchase with a merchant city and terminal number is shortened in NAME — the full text is kept in MEMO. And the file carries one balance: the closing balance as of the last transaction. OFX 1.0.2 has no place for the opening balance in a statement download, so you set it once when you create the account in your software, and every file after that continues from there.

Every transaction in the file has a FITID, and finance apps remember the FITIDs they have imported into an account. FlowParse builds the ID from the transaction's date, its position on the statement, the amount and the payee. Convert the same PDF again and you get the same IDs, so importing that file a second time — by accident, or because you were not sure the first import went through — is skipped rather than doubled.

The protection is per transaction ID, not per payment. If you import a September statement and later a quarterly statement that also covers September, the same payment appears in two different files at two different positions, with two different IDs, and the app sees two transactions. The fix is simple: import each period once. When you have several statements to bring in, merge them with Smart Merge and export the merge as a single .OFX — the transactions from all files go into one statement covering the whole period.

There is a second kind of duplicate that happens before the file is even written. Some banks print the same charge twice inside one statement: once in the transaction table and once in a notice block that announces it — “Avisos de lançamento” on Portuguese statements, “Avis de prélèvement” on French ones, “Lastschriftankündigung” on German ones. The notice row repeats the date and amount but has no running balance, because it is not part of the account's balance chain. FlowParse drops exactly those rows. Two genuine identical charges on the same day both sit in the table with their own balances, so both are kept.

OFX has two kinds of statement: a bank statement (checking or savings) and a credit card statement. They use different blocks in the file, and finance software treats them differently. If a credit card is imported as a checking account, the app offers to link it to a bank account, the balance has the wrong meaning and the card never reconciles.

FlowParse writes a card statement as a credit card statement. Purchases are negative, payments to the card are positive, and the closing balance is what you owe. When you import it, link it to a credit card account in your software — not to the current account the card is paid from. If you prefer a spreadsheet for card statements, see the credit card statement converter.

Why not just rename a CSV to .ofx? Because an OFX file is not a table. Renaming a CSV gives a file with the right extension and none of the tags — no account, no currency, no IDs — and every importer rejects it. Writing OFX by hand is possible for a few rows, but at fifty transactions a month the risk of one wrong sign or a missing closing tag is high, and one broken tag stops the whole import.

Catching up on months of statements? Upload them together, merge them, and export one .OFX for the whole period. You set the opening balance once, import once, and the closing balance in the file matches the last statement you hold. For QuickBooks the same applies to .QBO, and for Quicken to .QFX.