Convert BECU PDF bank statement to Quicken

BECU (Boeing Employees' Credit Union) provides one statement for all of a member's deposit accounts, personal or business, in Washington state: share savings, savings, basic checking and interest checking, in US dollars. The reviewed documents are three business statements with two or three accounts each, including checking accounts with a Checks Paid table.

Full name: Boeing Employees' Credit Union
Countries: United States
Supported statement formats: PDF
Supported destinations: QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, Quicken, Xero, CSV/Excel

BECU PDF statement details

The following details were checked against three BECU business statements from 2024 and 2025, from two members in Washington state. BECU is a credit union, and the statement shows it: one PDF covers every account the member holds, from a Business Member Share Savings with a zero balance to two Business Basic Checking accounts, each with its own Deposits, Withdrawals and Checks Paid lists. The layout is the same on all three, so the notes below apply to any BECU deposit account statement.

Settings for a BECU PDF statement

• Date: MM/DD/YY, 01/10/25, on every row, with the period in the header as "Statement Period: 01/01/2025 - 01/31/2025". The Withdrawals list can open with rows dated in the previous month, 12/31/24 on a January statement and 09/30/24 on an October one.
• Amount: comma for thousands, point for decimals, no currency symbol. Withdrawals are in parentheses, (5,000.00), in the transaction list and in the summary table. Deposits are unsigned. Checks in the Checks Paid table are unsigned, 1,224.51, although they are withdrawals.
• Account number: ten digits, 3610224587, in the "Summary of Deposit Account Activity" table on page one and in the heading of each account section, "Business Basic Checking - 3610224587". There is no running balance column; the beginning and ending balances are only in the summary table.
• Account type and currency: the section heading names the product, "Business Member Share Savings", "Business Savings", "Business Basic Checking" or "Business Interest Checking". US dollars. Interest is called "Dividend/Interest" and appears as the last deposit of the month on each account.

One statement, several accounts, and transfers that appear twice

The reviewed statements hold two or three accounts each. Every account has its own Deposits list, Withdrawals list and, for checking, a Checks Paid table, and the next account starts wherever the previous one ends, sometimes at the bottom of a page. A transfer between two of the member's own accounts is printed on both: Withdrawal Ahorro (2,318.46) under the checking account and Deposit Ahorro 2,318.46 under the savings account on the same date. A converter that reads the whole PDF as one account imports both sides, and the transfer nets to zero while the account balances go wrong by the same amount on each side. The converter has to let the user pick the account, or split the file by section heading.

Deposits and withdrawals are separate lists and start before the period

Each account lists all its deposits first, then all its withdrawals, so the rows are not in date order and a day's activity is split across two places. The Withdrawals list can begin with card purchases dated in the previous month, 12/31/24 at the top of a January statement, because BECU prints the transaction date and posts the row in the month it settled. A converter that sorts by date and merges the lists gets the right order, but the December row may already be on the December statement, so importing two consecutive statements can duplicate it. The Trace# on the second line of the row is the only way to tell.

Card rows take two lines and glue the state to the country

A card purchase reads POS Withdrawal and then the merchant, street address, city, and state and country run together, THE HOME DEPOT #4712 1715 SOUTH 352ND ST FEDERAL WAY WAU, 7-ELEVEN 7016 VALLEY AVE E US TACOMA WAUS, UBER *EATS 1455 MARKET ST 8005928996 CAUS. The description is cut at a fixed width, so the ending is WAUS, WAU, W or CAU depending on how long the address was. The second line reads Machine# 00000101 Trace# 00000000999999999999. Some merchants carry a store or terminal number in front of the name, 222220061137 APPLE STORE, 93061 COSTCO GAS #061. Amazon rows all share the same machine number and a trace number of all nines, so the trace number is not a unique reference for them. A converter that joins the two lines gives every payee a forty-character address and a twenty-digit trace number; one that keeps the first line still has to cut the address, the glued state and the leading terminal number to get THE HOME DEPOT #4712.

ACH rows carry the company name, the type and a reference in separate pieces

An electronic payment reads External Withdrawal IRS - USATAXPYMT 225541502071800, External Withdrawal WA DEPT REVENUE - TAX PYMT 14872213, External Deposit BANKCARD 8340 - MTOT DEP 517924500306142. The company name comes first, then a dash and the ACH entry description, then a reference. Merchant card settlements use the same BANKCARD 8340 - MTOT DEP text and the same reference number for every deposit of the month, so the description alone cannot tell two settlements apart. A converter that splits the description on the dash gets a usable payee; one that takes the whole line gets a payee that differs by reference number on every row and never matches twice.

Checks Paid is a three-column table sorted by check number

The Checks Paid table prints three groups of Check # Date Amount side by side, nine or twenty-one checks on a few lines, sorted by check number and not by date: 285 01/07/25 1,214.51 is followed by 286 01/06/25 1,702.96. An asterisk after a number, 4012 *, marks a gap in the sequence. The amounts have no parentheses. A note under the table says that checks cleared at a point of sale are listed in the Withdrawals section instead, so the same check number can appear in either place. A converter that reads the table line by line gets three checks per line and has to pair each check number with the date and amount in its own group, and has to treat every amount as a withdrawal although the sign is missing.

The page count in the footer does not match the file

One statement is numbered "Page 1 of 10" through "Page 9 of 10" and has nine pages of text; another has nine pages, the last one carrying no text at all after "Page 8 of 8". The extra or missing page is an image-only page, most likely check images or a notice. A converter that checks the footer count against the number of pages it read reports a missing page on a file that is complete, and one that expects text on every page stops on the blank one. The reliable check is the summary table on page one: deposits and withdrawals per account should match the sums of the lists.

PDF input challenges

A bank PDF can contain searchable text, scanned page images, or a mixture of both. Searchable text still needs layout analysis because transaction descriptions wrap, columns move, and headers or balances repeat at page breaks. A scanned statement adds OCR uncertainty.

Page breaks

A transaction may begin at the bottom of one page and continue on the next. Continuation pages can omit column headings, repeat an opening balance, or insert footer text and legal pages between transaction pages. A conversion should join split rows and exclude repeated page furniture before it writes the output.

OCR

On scanned pages, OCR can turn 0 into O, 1 into l, or 5 into S. It can also lose a minus sign or decimal mark, read two columns in the wrong order, or struggle with skewed and faint pages. The running balance is the best check: a damaged amount or missing row breaks the balance sequence.

PDF questions

Can I convert a scanned bank statement?

Yes. Review the OCR result and reconcile every balance movement. Scans with faint printing, rotation, or handwritten marks need more checking than searchable PDFs.

Why does copying and pasting a PDF into Excel fail?

PDF text stores page positions rather than a spreadsheet table. Wrapped descriptions, repeated headers, and visually aligned columns can paste in the wrong order or into the wrong cells.

How do I know whether the PDF contains searchable text?

Try selecting a transaction description in a PDF reader. If individual words can be selected, the page probably contains text. If the whole page behaves like one picture, it requires OCR.

Quicken import settings

Quicken imports transactions in QFX, QIF and, on Mac, CSV Mint. Which one works depends on the platform and the version.

• Quicken for Windows imports QFX (Web Connect) in versions that are still supported, and QIF in every version.
• Quicken for Mac imports QFX in supported versions, and CSV Mint in Quicken 2015 and later. Quicken for Mac does not import QIF.
• QFX stops working when a Quicken version is about three years old. QIF keeps working because it does not check the version.

QFX and QIF differ in what they carry:

• QFX carries the date, the amount, the payee, a memo, a check number and a unique transaction ID. It does not carry categories; Quicken assigns those with renaming rules during import. Quicken links a QFX file to an account by the account ID, so use the same ID for the same account every time, and a different ID for each account.
• QIF carries categories, subcategories and tags. It does not identify the financial institution and does not need an Internet connection. QIF has several variants; the converter must write the variant that matches the Quicken version and the account type.

Settings that matter:

• Account type: bank, credit card, cash or investment. A credit card QIF imported as a bank account reverses every sign.
• Dates: MM/DD/YYYY for US Quicken, DD/MM/YYYY for Canadian and UK versions.
• Amounts: signed, money out negative, no currency symbols.
• QIF target: Quicken for Windows, Quicken 2007 for Mac, or another application. The target changes the date format and the account header.
• Transaction IDs (QFX): unique per row and stable per transaction, so a second import of the same period does not double it.

Quicken questions

QFX or QIF for Quicken for Windows?

QIF when categories should come in with the transactions, or when Quicken is older than three years. QFX when the transactions should go into an account that already receives downloads and categories will be assigned by rules.

QFX or CSV Mint for Quicken for Mac?

QFX for a normal import into an existing account. CSV Mint when moving from another app and the categories must come along. CSV Mint imports into a new account; transactions can be moved afterward.

Why does Quicken say the file is not a valid QFX?

Either the Quicken version is discontinued and no longer accepts QFX, or the financial institution ID in the file is not one Quicken recognizes. Switch to QIF in the first case and choose a listed institution in the second.

Why did Quicken create a new account?

The account ID in the QFX file does not match the one Quicken stored for the existing account. Use the same account ID as the previous import.

Why are transactions doubled after import?

The same period was imported twice with different transaction IDs, or as QIF, which has no IDs and no duplicate check. Import each period once. For QIF, delete the doubled rows in the register.

Can I import investment transactions?

Yes, as QIF into an investment account. QFX also supports investment transactions but the converter must write buy, sell, dividend and other action types correctly, and Quicken must recognize the security.