Digital vs scanned: why it matters
A statement you download from online banking is a digital PDF. The text is stored as text, so it can be read exactly. A scanned statement is a picture of a page. Every character has to be recognized from the image, and small things like a smudge, a fold or a faint printer can turn an 8 into a 3.
Quick test: open the PDF and try to highlight a word. If you can select the text, it's digital. If you can only draw a box around the whole page, it's scanned.
StatementCheap handles both. But we'll be straight with you: scanned statements take longer and are less accurate than digital ones. If you can download the same statement from online banking, do that instead. Our bank guides, such as Bank of America and Chase, show where to find PDF statements.
Why the balance check matters even more here
With scans, the risk isn't usually a missing page. It's a misread digit. $1,248.50 read as $1,243.50 looks perfectly normal on its own. The balance check catches it, because the transactions no longer add up from the opening balance to the closing balance.
When a scanned statement doesn't reconcile, we show the difference and the rows where the running balance stops following. A difference of exactly 5.00, 9.00 or 90.00 often means one misread digit. Compare those rows with the scan and fix them in the spreadsheet. Our guide to reconciling a bank statement in Excel shows how to build the same check yourself.
Spot-check the risky rows
Even when a scanned statement reconciles, glance at rows with unusual characters: amounts with commas in the thousands, dates near the edge of the page and descriptions with lots of digits. If two misreads happen to cancel each other out, the totals can still match, so a quick look at the largest amounts is worth it.
How to get a better scan
- Use a flatbed scanner or a scanning app, not a quick photo, when you can.
- Scan at 300 dpi. Higher rarely helps, and lower makes small print hard to read.
- Keep pages straight and flat. Skewed or curled pages make columns harder to follow.
- Avoid shadows and glare, especially across the amount column.
- Black and white or grayscale is fine. Color adds file size without adding detail.
- Include every page, including the summary page with the opening and closing balances. Without them, there's nothing to check against.
Photos from a phone
We accept PDF files only. If you have photos of a statement, combine them into one PDF first. Most phone scanning apps and the built-in document scanners on iPhone and Android do this. Put the pages in order before you save.
Large or old documents
Scanned statements often come from archives, closed accounts or document productions. Each upload can be up to 200 pages and 25 MB. If a file is bigger, split it into smaller PDFs, ideally one statement each, so each one gets its own balance check. If you need statements from an account that's already closed, see how to get bank statements from a closed account.
Reading old statements
Older statements are full of short codes like POS, ACH, CHK and NSF. Our bank statement abbreviations guide explains the common ones.
Pricing
Scanned pages cost the same as digital pages: 5 free every day, $6 for a 150-page pack, or a monthly plan from $9. A failed conversion isn't charged. See pricing.
Works with statements from any bank, including Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One, Barclays and HSBC.