How BankRead Works
From bank statement to clean spreadsheet in six steps — powered by Claude, Anthropic's frontier AI.
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)
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
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
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
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
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:
United States
Europe & Neobanks
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.