The hard part of self-hosted budgeting: PDF bank statements
Some banks do not export transactions as CSV and only provide PDF statements. That makes it hard to import the data into budgeting tools such as or Actual. ’s data importer says PDF support is not planned.
PDF files can look like tables, but their internal structure is often messy, so turning them into clean CSV data is difficult. The remaining choices are manual copying into a each month or uploading bank statements to a free PDF-to-CSV website. That is a bad fit for people who because they want to keep financial data private.
Possible paths include local scripts, OCR, or changing to a bank that offers .
Key points
- Some banks provide PDF statements but no .
- does not plan to support PDF import.
- Free PDF-to-CSV websites create a privacy risk for bank statements.
- Local scripts or OCR may keep the workflow private.
- Switching to a bank with may be the cleanest fix.