ledgarooCiti statement to CSV
Drop the Citi PDF as you downloaded it. It is converted on your computer, and we check every row against the running balance and compare the totals with the ones Citi printed. Then download it for your accounting software or a spreadsheet.
Getting the PDF out of Citi
Statements for CitiBusiness accounts are in CitiBusiness Online, which gives immediate access to two years of them; statements up to seven years old can be ordered there and are ready the next day.
A system administrator lets another user see statements by selecting View Statements on that user’s Change a User screen, and CitiBusiness Online takes up to 99 users.
Paperless statements for a business account go through CitiBusiness Online, where they are made available to you and your authorized users.
From Citi’s own help: U.S. Citi Commercial Bank Treasury Solutions Guide (PDF), CitiBusiness Client Manual (PDF).
What a Citi statement looks like, and what we do with it
Page one stacks a Relationship Summary and a Service Charge Summary above CHECKING ACTIVITY, a table of Date, Description, Debits, Credits and Balance in which each row prints its own balance. The first line of each row is a short type, BILL PAYMENT, ACH DEBIT or DEBIT CARD PURCH, and the detail runs onto one or two lines beneath it. Oldest rows come first. The table carries on overleaf under a repeated header and ends in one Total Debits/Credits line, each figure under its own column.
- Dates are month and day, written 12/30, and the Statement Period gives two months and days but only one year, the closing one, so a period that crosses the new year names the earlier year nowhere.
- We give each row the year it falls in within the period, so a 12/30 row in a period closing in January is dated the December before.
- A debit card purchase runs over three lines: the card, a reference with the purchase date, then the merchant.
- We join all three into one description and date the row by the day it was posted.
- A Service Charge Summary above the activity ends in its own "Total Charges for Services" and "Net Service Charge".
- We check our totals against Total Debits/Credits under the activity, not against the fee table.
- Beginning Balance and Ending Balance sit beside the account heading, not in the table.
- We start the running balance from the first and check that the rows arrive at the second.
What this page is based on
This page rests on one statement: a month of CitiBusiness Streamlined Checking that runs from late December 2019 into January 2020, from a small company. Starting from the Beginning Balance, each row landed on the very balance Citi printed beside it, and our debits and credits matched Total Debits/Credits to the cent. We also opened a CitiBusiness Flexible Checking statement from 2017, but it holds a single transaction, too few to prove a layout, and a scanned Citibank statement bound among other banks’ pages, which we do not yet read cleanly. Neither is counted here.
CitiBusiness Analyzed Checking and CitiBusiness Interest Checking are not covered, nor are personal Citi accounts such as Regular Checking, the Costco Anywhere Visa Business Card, or anything taken from CitiDirect BE.
Once it is converted, the import steps for each accounting package are the same for every bank.
Questions
Why does the Service Charge Summary cover a different month from the statement?
In our sample it covered the calendar month before: a period running from late December to late January opened with a Service Charge Summary for December 1 to 31. It is a fee calculation with no transactions in it, so nothing there is exported, and a charge reaches your file only as a row in CHECKING ACTIVITY.
Is CitiBusiness Flexible Checking covered too?
Not yet. The one Flexible Checking statement we have holds a single transaction. It came out right, its balance agreeing with Citi’s, but one row cannot show how a fuller month is laid out, so this page vouches only for Streamlined Checking. On yours, the running balance check will flag an amount that does not add up, though a date or description is yours to look over.
Our Citibank statement is a scan inside a larger document. Will it read?
With some correcting. The one we tried was scanned pages of a Citibank statement bound with other banks’ pages, and after OCR two of its rows did not agree with the balance printed beside them. Those rows are marked red, and you can fix the figures in the table before downloading. If CitiBusiness Online still holds that month, download it there instead.
CitiBusiness Online only shows two years. Where are the older statements?
By ordering them. Citi’s Treasury Solutions Guide says statements up to seven years old can be ordered in CitiBusiness Online, ready the next day.
Privacy, scans and price work the same for every bank, and the home page answers them.