Bank statement glossary
Short, plain-English definitions of the terms that come up when you read, convert and reconcile bank statements.
- Bank statement
- A document from a bank listing every transaction on an account during a statement period, with opening and closing balances. Usually issued monthly as a PDF or on paper. More on bank statement
- Statement period
- The date range a statement covers, such as 1 to 31 July. Statement periods do not always match calendar months, which matters when you combine statements.
- Opening balance
- The account balance at the start of the statement period. UK statements often label it "balance brought forward".
- Closing balance
- The account balance at the end of the statement period. It should equal the opening balance plus credits minus debits; if it does not, something is missing or misread.
- Running balance
- The account balance after each transaction, shown line by line on many statements. It lets you check a conversion row by row: each balance should equal the previous one plus or minus that transaction.
- Debit
- On a bank statement, money leaving the account: a payment, withdrawal, fee or card purchase. Some statements show debits as negative numbers, others in a separate "withdrawals" or "paid out" column.
- Credit
- On a bank statement, money coming into the account: a deposit, transfer in, refund or interest. Shown as positive amounts or in a "deposits" or "paid in" column.
- Bank reconciliation
- Matching the transactions in your books or accounting software against the bank statement so the two agree, and explaining any differences such as uncleared checks. More on bank reconciliation
- Outstanding item
- A transaction recorded in your books that has not yet appeared on the bank statement, such as a check that has not cleared. A common reason the books and the bank differ at month-end.
- Transaction categorization
- Assigning each transaction to a category such as rent, payroll or software so spending can be summarized, reported and mapped to accounts. statement.work categorizes transactions automatically. More on transaction categorization
- Chart of accounts
- The list of accounts a business uses in its bookkeeping. Transaction categories are usually mapped onto it.
- OCR (optical character recognition)
- Technology that reads text and numbers from an image, such as a scanned page or a photo, and turns them into characters a computer can use. Needed for statements that have no selectable text. More on ocr
- Bank statement OCR
- OCR applied to bank statements, combined with an understanding of their layout, so the result is a table of dated transactions rather than loose text.
- CSV
- Comma-separated values: a plain-text file where each line is a row and commas separate the columns. The most widely accepted format for importing bank transactions into software. More on csv
- XLSX
- The standard Excel workbook format. Unlike CSV it can hold formatting, formulas and several sheets. More on xlsx
- JSON
- JavaScript Object Notation: a structured text format used by software and APIs. Useful when a script or app will process statement data. More on json
- Delimiter
- The character that separates columns in a text file. Usually a comma; some regions use semicolons because the comma is the decimal separator.
- Date format
- The order of day, month and year. US statements generally use month/day, UK statements day/month. Mixing them up silently swaps dates like 03/04.
- Duplicate charge
- The same payment taken twice, often with identical amount, merchant and date. statement.work flags likely duplicates. More on duplicate charge
- Bank fee
- A charge the bank applies to the account, such as a monthly maintenance, overdraft or wire fee. Easy to miss among other debits.