Frequently asked questions about BankWriter

Yes. BankWriter gives you 200 lines free once you verify your email address, which covers a real statement or two. Refer three colleagues who qualify and your allowance rises to 1,200 lines. The trial stops issuing new allowance 60 days after it starts, so earn any bonus inside that window. Trial exports of CSV and Excel files carry one short line noting they came from a trial; a licensed export does not. Full detail is in Free trial, licence keys and seats.

A licence is billed annually, per machine — see bankwriter.com/pricing for the current figure in your currency. The licence renews annually and you can cancel at any time. The price includes all updates, new bank coverage and email support. There are no per-page fees, no overage charges and no usage caps, so a heavy month costs exactly what a quiet one does. One seat covers one computer; a second computer needs a second seat.

Yes. Every licence carries a 15-day money-back guarantee. If BankWriter does not do what you need in the first 15 days, write to support@bankwriter.com and ask for a refund. Telling us what went wrong helps, because it is often something we can fix quickly. Cancelling later is separate and self-serve: open the License window in the app and click Manage subscription to stop your next annual renewal.

Almost certainly. BankWriter reads statements by their content rather than from a fixed list of banks, so most statements convert regardless of the institution or the country — including statements that are not in English. Chequing, savings and credit-card statements are all handled. If yours does not convert, we genuinely want to know: email support@bankwriter.com with a description of the file, and never the file itself.

No. Your statements are read, converted and exported on your own computer, and the files never leave it. BankWriter transmits three things only: licence checks, update checks, and anonymous usage counters. None of them carry your statement data. Unplug your network cable and a conversion still runs start to finish. For accountants handling client data, that is usually the deciding difference from a cloud-hosted converter.

Converting, reviewing and exporting all work offline. A connection is needed only for licence jobs: activating a key, releasing a seat, viewing your seat list, and the occasional licence check. Between those checks BankWriter keeps working without a connection, so a flight or a bad hotel network is not a problem. If you are travelling, activate before you leave.

Not necessarily. Needs review means BankWriter could not verify every line against the totals printed on your own statement, so it asks for your eyes rather than guessing. The rows in question are highlighted for you. Compare a flagged row against the original page, correct anything that is off, then click Approve. A statement that verifies end to end shows Reconciled instead. See The review screen.

Click the cell and type the correct value. Every cell on the review screen is editable, and the totals recompute as you go. The magnifier on each row shows that exact spot in the original PDF, zoomed and highlighted, so you can check a figure without opening the file separately. A faint digit here and there is normal on scanned pages, and the review screen exists to make the fix a few seconds' work.

Three things. Make sure it is a statement PDF from your bank, not a screenshot pasted into a document. Check that the file is not password-protected; remove the password and try again. If the pages are a scan, use Re-scan with detailed scan, which is slower but more thorough. Still nothing? Email support@bankwriter.com and describe the file — never attach it. Getting help explains what to send instead.

Yes. Statements with no selectable text — scans, faxes, phone photos — convert too. They take longer, and the rougher the image, the more likely you are to see a banner suggesting a spot-check. Re-scan with detailed scan on that banner runs a slower, more careful pass. If you control the scanner, 300 DPI in black and white, straight and uncropped, reads best. See Scanned statements.

Seven: CSV, XLSX, QBO, OFX, QFX, JSON and Markdown. CSV suits spreadsheets and most bookkeeping imports, and its summary report sits beside the data columns so copying the lines out stays clean. XLSX is a formatted Excel workbook with negatives shown in red parentheses. QBO imports into QuickBooks by Web Connect. OFX and QFX cover Xero, Sage, Quicken and most other accounting software. JSON is machine-readable for scripts and automations, and Markdown is a clean text table you can paste anywhere. Exports walks through each one.

Yes. Drop as many PDFs as you like and BankWriter works through them in order, opening a review screen for each with Approve & Continue. After the last one, the Export options dialog offers individual files, one combined file, or both. Review each statement lists the whole batch with each status, and lets you re-open any single statement, adjust it, and return to export without re-processing anything.

One seat is one computer, so using both machines needs two seats. If you only ever work on one at a time, move the activation yourself: open the License window on the first machine, click Release seat, then activate on the second with the same key. Moving a seat is self-serve and takes about a minute. Free trial, licence keys and seats walks through it.

Release the seat on the old machine first: open License in the footer, click Release seat, and confirm. Install BankWriter on the new computer, open License, choose Enter / change key, paste the same key and click Activate. Settings do not travel with the key, so set your export folder and cleanup rules again. If the old machine is already gone, email support and we will free the seat for you.

You mostly don't — BankWriter checks on its own. When an update is ready, a slim banner appears under the title bar with an Update now button. Click it and the update downloads, installs quietly and the app restarts itself, with no wizard to walk through. Ignoring the banner simply defers it until you are ready. To check by hand, open Settings and click Check for updates. Updates are included with your licence, and during the trial.

When a licence expires, BankWriter stops converting new statements. Anything you have already exported stays on your computer, untouched and yours. To cancel before the next renewal, open the License window and click Manage subscription, which opens your billing portal at account.bankwriter.com. The portal also holds your invoices and payment method, so you can update a card there without writing in.

Yes, that is what Clean descriptions is for. It turns a line like POS PURCHASE 1234 TIM HORTONS #2231 TORONTO ON into Tim Hortons, and never touches your amounts or dates. Quick clean is a single switch with a preview showing exactly what would change before you apply it. Payees groups a merchant's variants under one name. Your rules holds your own find-and-replace pairs. Your choices are saved and reused on future statements.

BankWriter is a Windows desktop application, and there is no macOS version today. If you work on a Mac, running Windows in a virtual machine is the usual route, and BankWriter behaves normally there. Tell us if a Mac build matters to you — demand is how we set priorities.

Email support@bankwriter.com, or open a ticket at account.bankwriter.com/tickets, where you sign in with an emailed code instead of a password. We aim to reply within 5 business days and are usually quicker. Include your app version from the footer, what you did, what you expected and what happened. Never attach a client's statement — Getting help shows what to send in its place.