NatWest Bank Statement to Excel Converter

Converting NatWest Statements to Excel

NatWest statements usually describe money arriving as Paid in and money leaving as Withdrawn, with a running Balance alongside. The layout is easy to follow on paper, but copying it into a spreadsheet tends to put both kinds of amount into one column, and US-style defaults can turn 02/10 into 10 February. Finlyzers keeps paid in and withdrawn apart and reads every date the UK way.

What a NatWest Statement Usually Contains

• Account details: account name, sort code, account number and statement period.
• Summary: typically the previous balance, total paid in, total withdrawn and the new balance.
• Transactions: columns usually labelled Date, Description, Paid in, Withdrawn and Balance.
• Page breaks: longer statements repeat a brought forward balance at the top of each page. These are balances rather than transactions, so they are excluded from the list.

Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank are part of the same group, and their statements often share much of this structure.

Reading NatWest Descriptions

NatWest descriptions typically name the payee and, depending on the statement and the payment, show how the payment was made. In NatWest's own transaction downloads the payment type is often abbreviated, for example D/D for a direct debit, S/O for a standing order, BAC for an automated credit such as a salary or customer payment, and POS for a card purchase. Whatever wording appears on your statement is kept in the description column, so you can filter on it in Excel.

Bank Feeds, FreeAgent and the Months Before

FreeAgent is part of NatWest Group, and eligible NatWest business customers can often use it as part of their banking. Like Xero and QuickBooks, it usually brings transactions in through a bank feed from the date the feed is connected.

That leaves a gap if you:

• switched to accounting software part-way through the financial year;
• need to rebuild records for an earlier year for your accountant;
• are catching up on Self Assessment, or bringing records into Making Tax Digital compatible software;
• have an older or closed account that was never connected.

Converting the statement PDFs fills that gap. Download OFX for FreeAgent, Xero or QuickBooks, or CSV for Sage and other tools that ask you to map columns. Before importing, check which dates the feed already covers so that no transaction is imported twice.

NatWest Downloads Versus Statement PDFs

NatWest Online Banking usually lets you download recent transactions as a file. That is quick for your own open account, but the statement PDF is still what you will work from when the period is older than the download covers, when the account is closed, or when someone has emailed you their statements.

A statement also covers a fixed period with an opening and closing balance, which makes it a natural unit for month-end or year-end work. Converting a year of monthly NatWest statements gives you twelve files whose balances should chain together, so a missing month or an unexpected gap is easy to see when you line them up in one workbook.

Mortgage Brokers and Lenders

Mortgage and loan applications commonly ask for recent statements as PDFs. If you are a broker or adviser receiving NatWest statements from a client, converting them to Excel lets you total income, list regular commitments such as direct debits and standing orders, and spot anything that needs explaining before the application goes in. Applicants can do the same to check their own figures first.

Other Banks and Statement Types

For other UK banks, see the Santander and Lloyds converter pages. Converting a NatWest credit card statement? Use the credit card converter. For paper statements that have been scanned or photographed, try the scanned statement converter.