How BankRead Works

From bank statement to clean spreadsheet in six steps — powered by Claude, Anthropic's frontier AI.

1

Upload Your Statement

Drag and drop your bank statement onto the dashboard, or tap to browse. On mobile, use the built-in camera with flash to capture a paper statement directly. Upload multiple files at once to combine months of data.

  • PDF bank statements (text-based)
  • Scanned PDF documents
  • CSV spreadsheets
  • Excel (.xlsx) spreadsheets
  • Images (JPEG, PNG)
  • Apple photos (HEIC)
2

AI Extracts Every Transaction

BankRead uses Claude by Anthropic — the most accurate AI model available — to read your statement and extract structured data from every transaction.

  • Text-based PDFs are parsed with pdfplumber, preserving column alignment
  • Scanned PDFs and images are processed with AI vision (Claude)
  • Spreadsheets (CSV, Excel) are parsed directly — no OCR needed
  • Extracted fields: date, description, debit, credit, balance
3

AI Categorizes Transactions

Claude reads each transaction description, identifies the merchant using real-world knowledge, and assigns a category. If you've set up keyword rules, those take priority — the AI fills in everything else.

  • AI-powered: Claude recognizes merchants like "UBER" or "COSTCO" and categorizes them automatically — no setup needed
  • Custom rules: create category groups (e.g. "Business Expenses"), add categories like "Transportation", and define keyword rules such as "UBER" that override the AI
  • Each transaction is tagged with its source — AI, Rule, or Manual — so you always know how a category was assigned
4

Review and Edit

All transactions appear in a sortable, scrollable table. The main task here is reviewing the categories the AI assigned and correcting any that are wrong — just click the category dropdown on any row to change it.

  • Click any category to open a dropdown and reassign it — your change is tagged as "Manual" so rules won't overwrite it
  • Multi-statement uploads show color-coded file badges so you can tell which transaction came from which statement
  • Sticky header stays visible as you scroll through hundreds of transactions, and you can click any column to sort
5

Create Category Rules

Want the same correction to apply automatically next time? Create keyword rules in Settings that override the AI. Rules are organized into category groups — switch between groups for different use cases like personal vs. business.

  • Create a category group (e.g. "Business Expenses"), add categories like "Transportation" or "Software", then add keyword rules such as "UBER" or "NETFLIX"
  • When a transaction description contains your keyword, the rule assigns your chosen category — overriding the AI
  • Apply rules to existing transactions with one click using "Reprocess Rules" on the dashboard — manually edited categories are never overwritten
6

Export to CSV or Excel

Download your clean, categorized transactions as a CSV or Excel file. The export includes every column you need for accounting software.

  • CSV (comma-separated values)
  • Excel (.xlsx)

Columns: date, description, debit, credit, balance, category

Compatible with: QuickBooks, Xero, MYOB, Sage, FreeAgent

Supported Banks

BankRead works with statements from any bank. We have step-by-step guides for these banks:

Canada

United States

United Kingdom

Europe & Neobanks

Australia

Try the Demo — No Sign-Up Required

See BankRead parse a real bank statement, categorize every transaction, and prepare an export — all in your browser.

Try the Interactive Demo