Convert Guaranty Bank & Trust PDF bank statement to Xero

Guaranty Bank & Trust provides statements for personal and business checking and savings accounts in Texas, in US dollars, and moved to the Glacier Bank statement layout in early 2026. The reviewed documents are a January 2026 statement in the old Guaranty layout and a March 2026 statement in the new one, for the same business checking account.

Countries: United States
Supported statement formats: PDF
Supported destinations: QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, Quicken, Xero, CSV/Excel

Guaranty Bank & Trust PDF statement details

The following details were checked against two Guaranty Bank & Trust statements for one business checking account of a restaurant in Texas: January 2026 and March 2026. They do not look like statements from the same bank. The January statement is the old Guaranty layout, with separate sections for credits, debits and checks and no running balance. The March statement is a "Statement of Account" on the Glacier Bank system, with one running table, signed amounts and a Glacier privacy notice at the back. The January statement itself announces the change in a box on page one, and a converter set up on one of the two layouts stops working on the other.

Settings for a Guaranty Bank & Trust PDF statement

• Date: MM/DD with no year on both layouts, 01/02 on the old one and 3/02 without the leading zero on the new one. The old period reads "Statement Period 1/1/2026 TO 1/31/2026"; the new one reads "Statement Dates 3/02/26 to 3/31/26 (30 days)". Check image captions carry the full date, 1/16/2026 on the old layout and 03/02/26 on the new.
• Amount: the old layout prints unsigned amounts with no currency symbol, 1,409.43, and takes the sign from the section. The new layout prints a dollar sign on every amount and a leading minus on debits, -$9,143.10, in a Debits column and unsigned credits, $2,846.60, in a Credits column, with a running Balance column.
• Account number: masked in the header of both, XXXXXX5218, and printed in full in the old summary block, Business Checking 13235218, and in every old check image caption. The new layout prints it masked in the product line, "TOTALLY FREE BUSINESS CHECKING - XXXXXX5218".
• Account type and currency: "Business Checking" in the old summary, "TOTALLY FREE BUSINESS CHECKING" on the new product line. US dollars.

The bank changed its statement layout between January and March 2026

The January statement carries a notice about a move to new systems, and the March statement is printed by them: the same account, the same masked number, a different page size, a different header, different columns and a different sign convention. Page two of the March statement lists the Glacier Bank divisions, and the privacy notice at the back is Glacier Bank's, with Guaranty Bank & Trust as one division. A converter that was set up for the January layout finds no DEPOSITS AND OTHER CREDITS heading in March, and one set up for March finds no Debits column in January. Both layouts have to be recognised, and the account number, which does not change, is the link between them.

Old layout: the sign comes from the section and checks have their own table

The January statement lists DEPOSITS AND OTHER CREDITS first, then WITHDRAWALS AND OTHER DEBITS, then CHECKS, each with a DATE AMOUNT DESCRIPTION header and unsigned amounts. The CHECKS table prints two groups of DATE CHECK NO AMOUNT side by side, sorted by check number and not by date, with an asterisk glued to the number to mark a gap, 2361*. A DAILY BALANCE INFORMATION table with three groups of DATE BALANCE follows, and a SUMMARY OF OVERDRAFT AND RETURNED ITEM FEES with dollar signs. There is no running balance on the rows, so the only checks are the summary block on page one and the daily balance table. A converter that reads any dated line with an amount takes the daily balances as thirty deposits.

New layout: the description is extracted after the amounts and checks can have no number

On the March statement the text of each row comes out of the PDF in the order date, debit or credit, balance, description, so a converter that reads the elements in file order sees 3/02 $2,846.60 $121,048.60 DDA Regular Deposit and takes the balance for the amount. Sorting by position fixes it. Check rows read CHECK and the number in a separate cell, CHECK 2347, and some read CHECK alone, -$4,200.00 with no number at all. The SUMMARY BY CHECK NUMBER table at the end has the same rows, with an asterisk in its own cell next to a number that is out of sequence and a note " Denotes checks out of sequence", and the rows without a number have an empty check number cell. A converter that requires a check number on a check row drops those, and one that takes the asterisk as part of the number produces `2347`.

ACH descriptions carry raw EDI segments and wrap across lines

A supplier payment reads ACH Ben E. Keith Com 1000 ISA*00* *00* *17*121000562 and continues on a second line with *17*111915608 *260102*011 on the old layout. On the new layout the same payment reads Ben E. Keith Com 1000 CTX 0000261412 091000015170382 ISA*00* with a second line *00* *17*121000562 *17*111915 608 *260302*0132*U*00401*. These are pieces of the EDI envelope that the sender put in the addenda, and the routing and trace numbers change on every payment. An Uber payout ends with REF*TN*ESRDM1DKWQ\, a backslash included. A converter that keeps the full description gets a payee that never matches twice; one that cuts at the first star, or at the ACH class code (PPD, CCD, CTX), gets Ben E. Keith Com.

Pages that are not part of the statement

The old layout is numbered "1 OF 4" but the file has five pages: page two is the back of the first sheet, a reconciliation worksheet with CHECKS OUTSTANDING, BALANCE BROUGHT FORWARD and $ ____________ boxes, unnumbered, and it sits between page 1 and page 2 of the statement. The old check image pages carry captions 13235218 $763.36 1/16/2026 2331, account, amount, date and check number, two per line. The new layout has eight pages: transactions on pages one, three and four, a list of Glacier divisions with addresses and phone numbers on page two, image pages with captions Date 03/02/26 Check No Amount $2,846.60 that include deposit slips as well as checks, and a two-page privacy notice whose own page numbers restart at "Page 2". Each new page also carries a short string of symbols in the top right corner, !NqHV)]mn"7T"|+`, which is a barcode printed in a barcode font. A converter that reads every page as transactions takes the worksheet, the captions, the division list and the barcode as data.

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.

Xero import settings

Xero imports bank transactions through Accounting, Bank accounts, Import a Statement (also reached as Manage Account, Import a Statement). The file goes into the bank account's reconcile list, where Xero matches each line to invoices, bills and bank rules, or creates a spend or receive money transaction.

• OFX is the format to aim for. It carries the date, the amount, a payee, a description, a reference, a check number and a unique transaction ID. Xero uses the ID to skip lines it already has, so re-importing a period does not double it.
• QBO and QFX are OFX with extra header fields for QuickBooks and Quicken. Xero reads them as OFX, either directly or after renaming the extension to .ofx. If a QBO, QFX or OFX file downloaded from a bank is rejected, the file usually has a header, encoding or date format Xero does not accept; converting it to a plain OFX fixes that.
• CSV works when the columns match what Xero expects. A CSV downloaded from a bank often needs mapping on import and sometimes fails on the date or amount format. A CSV written for Xero carries the column names Xero maps on its own: Date, Amount, Payee, Description, Reference, Check Number.
• PDF must be converted first, to OFX or to a Xero CSV.

Settings that matter:

• Account: the Xero bank account is chosen before the upload. The account number inside the file is not used to pick the account, but keep it stable per account so the file is recognized on the review screen.
• Account type: bank or credit card. Xero keeps the statement's sign convention for credit cards, so a card purchase stays a debit; the converter should not flip signs for Xero the way it does for some other targets.
• Dates: four-digit years. In CSV, use one order for the whole file and confirm it on the import screen; day-month and month-day are both accepted but Xero must be told which one.
• Amounts: one signed Amount column, or separate Debit and Credit columns, in a CSV. No currency symbols or thousands separators. Money out is negative in the single-column layout.
• Payee and description: Xero shows Payee as the contact and Description as the transaction text, and bank rules match on either. Put the merchant name in Payee and the bank's transaction text in Description. Reference is a free field that other targets do not have; use it for the bank's reference number.
• Transaction IDs: unique per line and stable per transaction, so a second import of the same statement skips what is already there instead of duplicating it.
• Balances: Xero does not read an opening or closing balance from the file. Check the statement balance in Xero against the printed closing balance after import.

Xero questions

Should I import OFX or CSV into Xero?

OFX. It carries the payee, description, reference and check number in separate fields and gives Xero a transaction ID for duplicate checks. CSV is fine when the file was written for Xero with the right column names; a bank's own CSV usually needs mapping and cleanup.

Xero says my OFX, QFX or QBO file is invalid. What is wrong?

Most often the file has a header Xero does not read, non-UTF-8 text, dates in a format it does not accept, or a missing transaction ID. Convert the file to plain OFX and import that. Renaming QBO or QFX to .ofx helps only when the content is already clean.

Why did Xero import only some of the transactions?

Xero skips lines whose transaction ID it already has, and for CSV it skips lines it reads as duplicates by date, amount and description. Two genuine identical lines on the same day can be dropped from a CSV. Use OFX with unique IDs for those.

Why are the dates wrong after a CSV import?

The date order was misread. A file with 03/04/2026 can be read as 3 April or 4 March. Set the order on the import screen, or export dates as YYYY-MM-DD, which Xero reads without asking.

How do I undo an import?

Open the bank account, go to the statement lines or Bank Statements tab, select the imported statement and delete it. The lines disappear from reconcile and the file can be imported again.

Can I import older periods into Xero?

Yes. There is no date limit on file imports. Import periods in order and do not overlap them, so the balance in Xero follows the statements.

Does Xero read the opening balance from the file?

No. The statement balance in Xero is computed from the imported lines. Compare it to the printed closing balance after each import. If they differ, a line is missing, doubled, or has the wrong sign.