Download the statement from your bank
From your bank's website, download the statement for the period you want. Books reads CSV, TXT and Excel (xlsx) files, and the bank formats OFX, QFX, camt.053 (an XML file) and MT940. Arabic files in Windows-1256 or UTF-8 are read as they are.
Open Statement lines, then upload the file
On the account's card in Banking, press Statement, then open the Statement lines tab (1). Now press Import a file (2) and choose the file. Import statement (3) is covered in step 5.
Open the Statement lines tab first. The preview only appears on this tab, so if you upload from Account ledger it will look as if nothing happened.
Check the preview, then confirm
Books shows the file's format and encoding, the first lines, how many lines there are, which are already in the books, and any without a date or amount. Nothing has been added yet. If it looks right, press the import button, which carries the number of new lines, such as Import 4 lines.
See what happened after the import
A summary shows how many lines are new, auto-matched and duplicates. The import itself posts no entry:
- A line that is already there is not added again, so uploading the same file twice is safe.
- Rules run on each new line and prepare their suggestion.
- If your books hold exactly one entry with the same amount within 10 days, the line is matched to it automatically.
- Import
- Rules
- Match
- Reconcile
If the file cannot be read
If Books does not recognise the column headings it imports nothing rather than guess. Use Import statement instead, choose a CSV file or paste the table from Excel, then say what each column means. Pick Date, then Amount (signed) or the two columns Debit / out and Credit / in, and press the import button.
Told the Arabic text is mangled? Export the statement again from the bank as UTF-8 or Windows-1256 and upload it. A foreign-currency statement also needs an exchange rate on record for the date of each line.
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