How to Download and Convert Bank of America Statements to CSV

Bank of America has one of the more complete online banking portals when it comes to statement access and data export. You can download monthly statement PDFs going back 18 months for checking and savings accounts (and up to 7 years for credit cards), and you can also download transaction activity directly in CSV or OFX format from the account activity view. The right choice depends on what you need the data for.

Option 1: Download transaction activity as CSV or OFX (fastest for recent data)

For recent transaction data, BofA's native download is faster than converting a PDF. This works for any date range within the past 18 months on deposit accounts.

1. Log in at bankofamerica.com and select the account.
2. On the account activity page, look for the Download button near the top of the transaction list.
3. Select your date range and format:
   • Microsoft Excel (.csv) for spreadsheets
   • Quicken (.qfx) or QuickBooks (.qbo) for accounting software
   • Microsoft Money (.ofx) for Xero or Quicken
4. Click Download.

Option 2: Download PDF statements (for older data or official records)

BofA provides eStatements as PDF files. Checking and savings accounts have 18 months of online statements by default. Credit cards have up to 7 years. Merrill Lynch and Merrill Edge accounts have their own separate portal at merrilledge.com.

1. Log in at bankofamerica.com and select the account.
2. Click Statements and Documents (or "eStatements") in the account menu.
3. Select the month and click the PDF download button.

For statements older than what is available online, you can request them through BofA's customer service. There may be a fee for statements older than 18 months on deposit accounts (typically $5 per statement, though this varies).

Converting Bank of America PDFs to CSV

BofA statement PDFs use a clean tabular format with Date, Description, and Amount columns. A dedicated parser handles this well. Upload your PDF to Statement Pro's Bank of America converter and download clean CSV output.

Understanding BofA's date and amount format

Bank of America checking and savings statements list transactions with the posting date. Amounts in BofA checking statements do not use negative signs. Instead, credits (deposits, incoming transfers) and debits (payments, purchases, withdrawals) appear in separate columns. Most CSV converters combine these into a single signed Amount column, but if you are doing the conversion manually, you will need to merge the debit and credit columns yourself, with debits as negative values.

BofA credit card statements follow the credit card convention: charges are positive, payments and credits are negative.

Importing into Excel

Use Data > From Text/CSV in Excel rather than opening the file directly. Set the delimiter to comma and check that dates are recognized as date values rather than text. BofA dates typically appear as MM/DD/YYYY.

Importing into QuickBooks Online

If you downloaded in QBO format, go to Transactions > Bank Transactions > File Upload and upload the file directly. No column mapping needed. For CSV imports, QuickBooks will prompt you to map the columns during the upload process.

One thing to watch: if you have a BofA checking account connected to QuickBooks through an automatic bank feed, importing a CSV that overlaps with the feed's date range will create duplicates. Either disconnect the automatic feed before importing, or make sure your import file starts after the last date the feed imported.

Importing into Xero

Use the OFX download from BofA for the cleanest Xero import. Go to Accounting > Bank Accounts, select the account, and click Import a Statement. If you are using CSV, Xero needs Date, Payee, Description, and Amount columns, with positive amounts for credits and negative for debits.

For PDF-to-CSV conversion guidance that applies to any bank, see How to Convert PDF to CSV. For instructions specific to other major banks, see the guides for Chase, Capital One, and Citibank.