Aplos Bank Reconciliation Import from PDF Bank Statements

Can Aplos import a PDF bank statement?

No. Aplos brings bank activity in two ways, a Plaid bank feed and a Manual Import that reads a spreadsheet built on its sample transaction file. Neither reads a PDF. To get a PDF statement into an Aplos register, convert it to Excel or CSV with the tool above, paste the rows into the Aplos template, and upload it on the Manual Import page. Then reconcile the month as usual.

The menu paths and column rules on this page come from the Aplos help center. Our part is the conversion. The converter reads the statement, digital or scanned, and writes the transaction table to a spreadsheet, so the treasurer or the outsourced bookkeeper does not retype a month of checks, deposits and card charges before the import can start.

When the Aplos bank feed is not enough

Bank Integration is the easy path for current activity, and most churches and nonprofits on Aplos use it. Its own help center names the gaps. A newly connected account usually pulls only 30 to 90 days of history, depending on the bank. A bank that Plaid does not support cannot be connected at all. And a reconnect can pull already imported transactions in again, which leaves you sorting duplicates.

For all of those cases Aplos points to the same door, Manual Import, and says it is also the way to bring in transactions older than the feed window. That covers the situations that actually fill a nonprofit bookkeeper's week: a new organization moving to Aplos mid-year, a prior treasurer who left a year of statements in a folder, a small local bank or credit card with no feed, a closed account that still has to be reconciled for the audit, or a grant account the board opened last spring. The bank will give you a PDF for every one of those months. It will not give you a spreadsheet in the Aplos layout.

How to import a PDF bank statement into Aplos

Plan on about fifteen minutes for the first statement, most of it spent cleaning payee names, and a few minutes for each month after that.

1. Upload the PDF statement with the box at the top of this page. Scanned and photographed statements go through OCR the same way.
2. Check the rows against the beginning and ending balances printed on the statement, then export Excel or CSV.
3. In Aplos go to Fund Accounting, Transactions, Registers, click the Import icon in the top right, and click Download the sample Aplos transaction file. The workbook lists your accounts and funds on separate tabs.
4. Paste the converted columns into the template: date, description into Note/Memo, a cleaned payee, check number and one signed amount. Add account and fund now if you know them. Delete the legend rows, then save.
5. Drag the file into the blue upload area on the Manual Import page. Confirm the register shown in the Account Register box is the bank account you are importing into, review the lines, assign any missing account and fund, and import.
6. Open Fund Accounting, Transactions, Bank Reconciliation, pick the register, enter the statement ending date and ending balance, check off the cleared lines and click Reconcile when the Difference reads 0.00.

Which columns does the Aplos transaction import need?

Three columns are required, Date, Payee and Amount. Note/Memo, Check #, Account, Fund and any Tags columns are optional, and anything you leave blank can be picked on the import screen instead. A converted statement already carries the date, description, check number and amount, so the work is mapping them into the template the way the table shows.

If the bank prints deposits and withdrawals in separate columns, add one Amount column in Excel that returns the deposit as a positive number and the withdrawal as a negative one, then paste that column into the template. If your organization uses tags, the template carries one column per tag dimension, titled with the dimension name, and a tab listing the allowed values.

Clean the payee before you import, not after

This is the step that decides whether the import helps or hurts. The Payee column is required, and Aplos creates a new contact whenever a name does not exactly match one already in your database. Bank descriptors are rarely exact. One utility can appear as three slightly different strings across a year of statements, and importing them as they are leaves three new contacts and a cluttered contact list that someone has to merge by hand.

Before you paste, sort the converted rows by description, give repeat vendors the exact contact name they already have in Aplos, and keep the bank's raw text in Note/Memo so nothing is lost. It takes a few minutes per statement and saves a cleanup project later.

Donations, transfers and printed checks

Not every line on a statement belongs in a register import. Aplos is explicit about donations: if a deposit is made up of gifts and you send contribution statements, record it through the Donations area, because a deposit imported straight into the register is not tracked by donor. Delete those rows from the template, or enter them as contribution deposits instead.

• Transfers between your own accounts. Import the transfer from one account only, and drop it from the other statement.
• Credit card payments. The payment shows on both the checking and the card statement. Keep it on one side.
• Checks printed from Aplos. They are already in the register. Drop them from the import and clear them during reconciliation.
• Bills and invoices. A payment tied to an Accounts Payable bill or an Accounts Receivable invoice belongs in that module, not in a register import.
• Split transactions. Put the date, memo, payee, check number and first amount on one row, then add rows below with only the amount, account and fund for each additional split.

Reconciling the month once the lines are in

The Bank Reconciliation screen lists every register entry in one column, which matches how most bank statements print. Sort or filter by type, date, check number, name or amount to follow the statement order. The balance bar at the bottom shows the total and the count of checked payments and checked deposits, and most statements print the same totals and counts near the top, so you can tell at a glance which side is off before the difference reaches 0.00. When it does, click Reconcile and Aplos produces the bank reconciliation report your auditor or finance committee will ask for.

For a catch-up year, import and reconcile one statement at a time, oldest first. Each month then closes on its own ending balance, and a problem in March does not hide inside a twelve month file.

What a year of statements costs to convert

OFXStatement Starter is $49 a month, or $24.50 a month on the annual plan, for 2,500 pages from one shared pool. A small church or nonprofit checking statement usually runs four to eight pages, so a full year of one account is 50 to 100 pages, and a catch-up year across checking, savings and a card account fits comfortably inside one Starter month. Plus is $149 a month for 10,000 pages with bulk upload of up to 50 files at once, which suits accounting firms that keep books for many nonprofit clients. You can test 15 pages without a credit card before you pay.

Set that against the alternative. A volunteer treasurer keying a 200 line statement into the Aplos template takes most of an evening, and every typo surfaces later as a reconciliation difference somebody has to find.