Your converted statement does not balance. Here is how to find the row that is wrong

Most converters hand you a spreadsheet and leave you to trust it. This one re-derives every row from the running balance the statement itself prints: if the balance moved by one figure and the row says another, the two disagree and the row is marked Check rather than quietly included. So a statement that does not balance is not a dead end. It is a shortlist, usually of one or two rows out of several hundred.

What the row is actually telling you

Open a flagged row and it says what it found in the statement’s own figures: how much the balance moved, and how much the row claims to have moved it. Underneath is the page number and the line exactly as the PDF printed it, so you can put the two side by side without hunting through the document.

That line matters more than the amount. Almost every real disagreement is visible the moment you compare the printed line with what was read from it.

Two kinds of disagreement, and why only one gets a fix button

If the difference has the shape of a misread figure — two digits transposed, a decimal point in the wrong place, a digit dropped — you are offered the correction, the original, or the option to correct the balance instead. Pick one and the entire check runs again from the start, because one correction can resolve or create a discrepancy on the row below it.

If the difference has no such shape, no numeric fix is offered, and that is deliberate. A button that made the row whatever value balances the statement would turn a card payment into a deposit and then report the result as reconciled — over a transaction that is missing entirely. Instead the message says so plainly and sends you to the page: what you are usually looking at is a transaction that was never read, or a wrong balance on the row above.

The usual causes, in the order they turn up

• A figure genuinely misread from the page — faint print, an unusual typeface, a digit clipped by a table rule.
• A transaction missing between this row and the one above, which is what an unexplained gap almost always means.
• A fee or interest summary printed under the table and read as a transaction, so the total moves without the balance agreeing.
• A page break in the middle of a wrapped entry, where the figures sit on one page and the description on the next.
• Two statements for the same account in one PDF, where the second opens a fresh balance that does not follow the first.

What to do before you export

1. Compare the flagged line with the same line in the PDF, using the page number shown on the row.
2. If it is a misread figure, apply the correction offered and watch the check re-run.
3. If it is a gap, find the missing transaction on that page. It is usually directly above or below.
4. If you cannot resolve it, decide what the file should say: flagged rows can be marked in a status column so whoever reads the file can see them, or the file can be held back until the row is settled.

The second option exists because a file that silently contains a row nobody checked is worse than no file. Which of the two you want depends on who reads the export next — marking is right if that is you, holding it back is right if it is a client or an accountant.

When rows cannot be checked at all

Some statements print no running balance — most credit cards, and some business accounts. Those rows come back marked with a dash rather than a tick: not wrong, not verified, simply not checkable against anything the page prints. What can still be checked on a statement with no running balance covers what to do with those.