PDF to Excel for CPA Firms

Built for CPA firms during busy season and year-end cleanup. Batch-process client envelopes — 1099s, K-1s, W-2s, brokerage statements, bank statements, vendor invoices — into clean Excel files ready for tax software import or workpaper review.

Try it on a client envelope — free

Busy season is half tax planning, half data entry

By February, every client envelope is a stack of mixed documents — six 1099s from different brokerages, two consolidated 1099-Bs, a K-1 from a partnership, three W-2s for a working couple, four bank statements the client downloaded for the deductible expense audit. Tax software import only works when the issuer provides a clean download; client-handed PDFs don't import. So preparers type EINs, TINs, and box amounts into Lacerte, ProSeries, Drake, or UltraTax for hours per return.

Year-end cleanup work is worse. Client never set up bank feeds, hands over 12 months of paper statements scanned to one PDF per month. Multi-year clean-ups for a small business means hundreds of pages of documents that need to become structured GL data before any actual accounting can happen.

Every client document, every form, into one workbook

PDFExcel reads the documents CPAs actually handle. Mix 1099 variants (NEC, MISC, DIV, INT, B, K), partnership and S-corp K-1s, W-2s, consolidated brokerage statements, and paper bank statements in a single client envelope upload — get back one workbook with each form on its own row, columns aligned to your tax software's import schema.

Year-end cleanup runs the same way. Drop a year of scanned statements as one ZIP, get back a single workbook with each month as a tab — running balance preserved, deposit detail handled, ready for trial-balance prep. The OCR pipeline is tuned specifically for tax-form layouts, so payer EINs and recipient TINs come out correctly even from scanned client copies.

Fields you can pull

  • Form Type / Document Type
  • Tax Year
  • Payer EIN / Recipient TIN
  • Box-by-Box Amounts
  • Federal & State Withholding
  • Account Balances
  • Transaction Detail
  • Client Identifier

Trained on real tax-form layouts and the messy mix of documents CPA clients actually hand over — including consolidated brokerage 1099s, partnership K-1s with footnotes, and scanned paper statements. Not a generic AI chatbot.

Why CPA firms pick PDFExcel during busy season

Most tax-document tools either need an integration with each issuer or a per-page enterprise contract. PDFExcel reads any client-provided PDF on the first upload — and you can batch a whole envelope in a minute.

  • Knows every tax form variant. 1099-NEC/MISC/DIV/INT/B/K/R/S/OID/PATR, K-1 (1065 + 1120-S), W-2, plus consolidated 1099s from Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, TD.
  • Free during off-season, scales for busy season. 10 free documents/month off-season. Scale to Pro ($199, 200 docs) or Business ($699, 1,000 docs) for January-April. No annual contract — cancel any time.
  • No tax-software integration to set up. Export as CSV and copy into Lacerte / ProSeries / Drake / UltraTax. No vendor onboarding, no per-issuer integration, no IT lift.
  • Tax data deleted after processing. Client tax documents are processed in memory and deleted immediately. Never stored, never shared, never used to train AI.

How it works

  1. Upload the client envelope. Drop in the whole stack — 1099s, K-1s, W-2s, brokerage statements, bank statements. Native PDFs and scanned client copies both work.
  2. Pick fields per document type. Form Type, Payer EIN, Recipient TIN, Box 1, Box 4 to start. Add specific boxes (1a/1b for DIV, 2a for capital gains) for your prep workflow.
  3. Import into tax software. Excel or CSV per document type. Copy values directly into Lacerte, ProSeries, Drake, UltraTax — or use as a prep checklist.

What a busy-season client envelope looks like in Excel

Mixed 1099 variants + K-1 + W-2 in a single upload. One row per form. Drop into your tax software's CSV import.

# Form Year Payer / Issuer ID Box 1 / Wages Withholding
1 W-2 2024 Acme Corp 84-1234567 $132,400.00 $24,612.00
2 1099-NEC 2024 Spencer Consulting LLC 12-9988776 $22,500.00 $0.00
3 1099-INT 2024 First Republic Bank 94-1234567 $1,842.18 $0.00
4 1099-DIV 2024 Charles Schwab & Co 94-1737782 $3,210.44 $642.09
5 K-1 1065 2024 Ridgeway Partners L.P. 47-2233445 $8,940.00 $0.00

Built for every shape of CPA practice

Solo CPAs and EAs handling individual returns, mid-size firms with split tax-prep + bookkeeping practices, regional firms doing audit and assurance, advisory-only firms doing year-end clean-up.

A solo CPA in February

20 individual return clients in the queue. Each envelope has 8-15 mixed forms. Batch upload per client, copy values directly into Drake. Returns that took 90 minutes of typing now take 30 minutes of review.

A 15-person regional firm

Tax-prep + bookkeeping practice. Tax team uses PDFExcel for client envelopes; bookkeeping team uses it for monthly close. One tool across the whole firm — no per-team licensing or onboarding.

An advisory-only firm doing year-end cleanup

New client hands over 18 months of scanned paper statements. Convert all to Excel as one batch, build the GL by trial-balance walkthrough — all in 2 days instead of 2 weeks.

Pricing

  • Free — 10 documents / month, no credit card
  • Starter $69/mo — 50 documents, $1.50 per extra
  • Pro $199/mo — 200 documents, $0.99 per extra
  • Business $699/mo — 1,000 documents, $0.59 per extra

Frequently asked questions

Is this really free?

10 documents per month, free, forever. Off-season usage usually fits free or Starter ($69/month, 50 docs). For January-April busy season, scale up to Pro ($199, 200 docs) or Business ($699, 1,000 docs). No annual contract — pause/resume any month.

Does it work on consolidated brokerage 1099s from Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard?

Yes. Consolidated 1099s preserve the section structure — DIV boxes, INT boxes, and 1099-B sections each get their own columns. Summary page numbers reconcile to per-section detail.

Can I import the output into Lacerte / ProSeries / Drake / UltraTax?

Yes. We export as CSV with the column structure each tax software expects. Most preparers copy column-by-column into the form-entry screens; some firms have built import macros against the CSV format. We don't have a direct API integration — by design, it keeps the tool simple and avoids per-software integration risk.

What about K-1s with multiple boxes and footnotes?

Yes. K-1s (Form 1065 partnership and Form 1120-S S-corp) extract with all box amounts plus the supplemental statements page when present. The footnotes-style disclosures come through as a separate text field for review.

Are client tax documents handled securely?

Yes. Files are encrypted in transit, processed in memory, and permanently deleted as soon as extraction completes. Never stored, never shared with third parties, never used to train AI. SOC 2 controls in progress for firm-level vendor reviews.

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