Said It Here

How to stop manually moving numbers from PDFs into Excel

Standard converters and import tools fail on messy scans and shifted tables from diverse client documents like bank, brokerage, and AP aging statements. This forces staff to spend a huge portion of their day manually cleaning up data, matching files, and hunting down exceptions.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Using built-in Excel import tools
  2. 2
    Using file converters
  3. 3
    Using AI tools like Claude and GPT
  4. 4
    Using general-purpose AI tools like Claude or Gemini for pieces of the process
  5. 5
    Using alternative software like cellsource.app

In their words

Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.

“honestly starting to feel like we’re still doing way too much manually Especially when PBC docs aren’t super clean . Like investment statements, bank statements, random schedules from clients.”source ↗

“We can get the data out, but my staff still has to clean it up, match it against another file and go hunt down the exceptions.”source ↗

Aea-Hardi · r/Accounting · 8 upvotes

“how much of your guys day is literally just moving numbers from a PDF into Excel.”source ↗

“I’m tired of it,we get bank statements, brokerage statements, AP agingreports, all from different systems.”source ↗

“one client sends us actual photos of documents, I’ve tried the built in Excel import and a few converters and they’re fine until they’re not, and the “not” is usually a scan or a table that shifted two columns over”source ↗

gampa_tretiyeludu · r/Accounting · 3 upvotes

Where this came up

r/Accountingaccountingauditingautomationproductivity

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