A statement you download from online banking contains real text: a converter reads each number exactly. A scan — a paper statement put through a scanner, a PDF made from photos, or a picture taken with a phone — contains only an image of the text. To get the transactions out, the image has to be read with OCR (optical character recognition), and the quality of the result depends on the quality of the image.
First: can you get a real PDF instead?
Before converting a scan, check whether your bank can give you the statement as a downloaded PDF. Most online banking and banking apps let you download statements for the past months or years, and branches can usually email them. A downloaded PDF gives exact results in seconds. Keep scans for paper statements you cannot get any other way.
How to tell if your PDF is a scan
Open it and try to select a word with the mouse. If you can highlight text, it is a text PDF. If the whole page highlights as one picture, or nothing highlights, it is a scan.
Getting a good scan
- Use a scanner or a scanning app, not a plain photo, if you can. Scanning apps flatten the page and fix the angle.
- 300 dpi is the sweet spot. Lower makes small digits unreadable; higher only makes the file bigger.
- Straight, flat and complete. No folds over numbers, no fingers, the whole page in the frame.
- Even light, no shadows for photos. Daylight next to a window works well; avoid the flash.
- Black and white or greyscale is fine and often reads better than colour.
Converting it
- Drop the scanned PDF or the photos on StatementEasy.
- Choose where to read it: on our server uses stronger text-recognition models and gives the best result (the file is deleted right after reading); on this device sends nothing, but reads scans less accurately.
- Wait for the pages to be read. Long scans take a while; every page has to be recognised.
- Look at the balance check before downloading.
Checking an OCR result
OCR can confuse similar characters: 1 and 7, 3 and 8, 0 and O, or a missing decimal point. That is why the balance check matters more for scans than for anything else:
- Every row checks out — the running balances add up; the result is as good as a text PDF.
- A few rows are highlighted — open the PDF next to the table and compare those lines. StatementEasy shows the balance it expected, so a misread amount is usually obvious; click the cell to correct it.
- No balance on the statement — nothing can be checked line by line. Compare the totals with the statement summary, and spot-check a few amounts.
Common questions
Can it read handwritten notes?
No, OCR here is for printed statements. Handwriting is skipped or misread.
Why is a photo worse than a scan?
Phone photos are often slightly tilted, curved or unevenly lit, which blurs small digits. A scanning app removes most of that.
Is my scan kept?
A scan read on our server is deleted right after reading. See the privacy policy for details.