How to Convert an HSBC Statement to CSV
HSBC UK produces statement PDFs in noticeably different layouts depending on the product: a personal Bank Account statement does not look like a Premier statement, which does not look like a Kinetic business statement. Column positions move, descriptions run onto a second line, and the paid out and paid in figures sit in different places.
This is the route from any of them to a clean CSV, and, more usefully, how to tell in ten seconds whether the conversion actually worked.
Download the statement from HSBC
In the HSBC UK app, open the account, tap Account details, then Statements, pick the month and download the PDF. In online banking it is under Statements in the account view. HSBC keeps several years available, so a full history is a matter of downloading each month rather than requesting anything.
Download rather than print to PDF where you can. A printed page is a picture of a statement, so it has to go through OCR rather than being read directly, and OCR is where the mistakes are.
Convert it in the browser
Drop the PDF onto PivotBank. There is no HSBC mode to select, and no per-bank rules behind the scenes: one parser reads every statement by finding the rows that begin with a date, taking the last two figures on each as the amount and the running balance, and working out which way the money went from how that balance moved. Layout variety is handled by reading positions rather than by knowing HSBC in particular.
The PDF is never uploaded, and only its transaction lines are read, with names, addresses and account numbers removed first, which is what makes it safe for a client’s statement as well as your own.
Check it before you import it
This is the step worth ten seconds. A statement is a self-checking document: the opening balance, plus every credit, minus every debit, has to land exactly on the closing balance. The converter recomputes that chain and tells you whether it holds.
If it says the balances reconcile, every row was read and every amount was read the right way round. If it reports a gap, it reports the size of the gap too, which is usually enough to find the page that went wrong: a figure that matches one transaction means a row was missed, and a figure that is exactly twice a transaction means one was read as money out when it was money in.
On an HSBC statement the balance column is always present, so this check is always available. It is the reason a layout the parser has never seen is safe to trust: it does not have to recognise the statement to prove it read it.
What the CSV actually contains
One row per transaction, with five columns: Date, Description, Debit, Credit and Balance. Money out and money in are separate columns rather than one signed figure, which is what Excel, Google Sheets, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage all expect from a bank import.
Descriptions are quoted, so a merchant name containing a comma does not split into two columns, and a quotation mark inside one is doubled as CSV requires. Blank cells mean the statement had no figure there rather than a zero, which matters: a debit row genuinely has no credit, and writing 0 would make the column sums wrong.
If a column comes out wrong
The usual cause is a description that ran onto a second line and swallowed the figure below it. The balance check catches this, because the amounts stop chaining. Converting the same month from a freshly downloaded PDF rather than a forwarded or re-saved one fixes most of it: re-saving a PDF through a print dialogue can drop the text layer entirely and turn a digital statement into an image.
If it still will not read, say which bank and which account type on the contact page. Nobody needs the statement itself: the layout is the thing that matters and it is the same for everyone on that product.
Other formats, and other banks
CSV is the universal one. If the destination is a specific package there is usually a better file: QBO for QuickBooks, OFX for Xero and Sage, QIF for the desktop ledgers, or Excel with a summary sheet. All of them come from the same parse.
For HSBC specifics, the download steps and the questions people actually ask, see the HSBC statement converter page, or pick another bank from the full list.