Convert Orco Bank PDF bank statement to Xero

Orco Bank provides statements for business and personal current accounts in Curaçao, in Netherlands Antillean guilders (ANG) until 2025 and in Caribbean guilders (XCG) from 2025 on. The reviewed statements are business current account statements from 2024 to 2026, including a combined statement with a summary of balances for two accounts.

Countries: Curaçao
Supported statement formats: PDF
Supported destinations: QuickBooks Online, Xero, CSV/Excel

Orco Bank PDF statement details

The following details were checked against Orco Bank business current account statements from Curaçao, 2024 to 2026, from three to fourteen pages each, including a combined statement with a "SUMMARY OF BALANCES" page for two accounts. The bank name is not in the text layer; it is in the logo. The page is recognized by the account line, 450012-104-001-001-01 XCG, the "C/A Business Resident" account type, and the "Starting balance on" and "Ending balance on" rows.

Settings for an Orco Bank PDF statement

• Date: rows carry two six-digit dates with no separators, 040126 for April 1, 2026, in MMDDYY order. The statement period is printed in the header as 04/01/2026 and 04/30/2026, month first. Both are US order on a Dutch Caribbean statement, which a converter set to day-first for the region gets wrong on every row that can be read both ways.
• Amount: comma for thousands, point for decimals, no sign. Debits and credits are two columns with no printed header in the text layer; the column is known only by position. A negative balance is printed with a trailing minus, 1,782,156.43-, and a positive balance without one, 5,358.64.
• Account number: the header prints 450012-104-001-001-01 with the currency after it. The last two digits are the sub-account, and a combined statement lists -01 and -02 under "SUMMARY OF BALANCES".
• Account type and currency: "C/A Business Resident" is a business current account. The currency is ANG on 2024 statements and XCG on 2026 statements, the same guilder before and after the currency change.

There is no column header, and the debit column is the left one

The transaction table has no header row in the text layer. Dates are on the left, the description in the middle, then two amount columns and the balance. Debits are in the left amount column and credits in the right one. A converter that guesses the columns from the first row, or that reads amounts by their order in the text, has a fifty percent chance of swapping every sign. The check is the balance: for a business account that runs on a credit line, the balance has a trailing minus and grows when a debit posts, 1,801,576.99- after a 36,330.00 payment.

The balance is negative for the whole statement

The reviewed fireworks importer runs its account on a credit line, so every balance on the statement is negative and printed with the minus after the number, 1,873,062.39-. A converter that reads 1,873,062.39- as text and not as a negative number loses the running balance check. One that reads it as a positive number reports the account with two million guilders of cash instead of two million of debt.

Each page has its own footer, and the totals are cumulative

Every page ends with an "Ending balance on 4/30/2026" row that carries the running totals of debits and credits up to that page, and every page after the first starts with a "Previous page balance" row that repeats them. The final page also prints *** End of account statement ***. A converter that reads every row with a date and two numbers as a transaction picks up a "Previous page balance" transaction on each page and an "Ending balance" transaction at the end, with amounts in the hundreds of thousands. The footer and the carry-forward row are not transactions; only the last page's footer is the closing balance.

Point-of-sale rows take five lines

A card terminal purchase prints MAESTRO/POS with the amount on the first line, then a line of terminal and authorization codes, 0601080054 557091 120814 0527 268269, then a second code line, then the merchant, 190000 DELINOVA B.V., then the city and country code, CURACAO CW. The payee is on the fourth line. A converter that keeps the first line calls every purchase MAESTRO/POS; one that joins all five lines puts forty characters of codes before the merchant name. Card sales received from the bank's terminals are the reverse: VS-MC SALE Christmas Palace and DB OB SALE rows are credits with the merchant's own store name, and MERCH FEE rows are the debits for them.

Transfers between banks read like memos

Transfers to and from other banks on the island carry the customer's own memo as the description, mcb naar orco bank over and over orco van rbc alivio, in Dutch, followed by the account name on the next line. There is no bank code and no reference number on the row. A converter that wants a payee gets the memo, and the accountant who sets up the rules has to match on naar orco and van rbc to tell inbound from outbound, since the amount column already says which is which.

Combined statements start with a summary page

A year-end statement can start with a "SUMMARY OF BALANCES" page that lists each sub-account with its currency and balance, followed by an "IMPORTANT MESSAGES" block, before the transaction pages of each account. The summary balances have the same trailing-minus format as the transaction balances. A converter that starts parsing at the first number on page one reads the summary as transactions of the first account. The account pages are the ones with a "Starting balance on" row.

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.