Convert any PDF — vendor bills, expense receipts, bank statements, business credit card statements — into a CSV pre-formatted for FreshBooks expense and bill imports. Built for freelancers, consultants, and small services businesses on FreshBooks.
FreshBooks' built-in expense capture (and the Bench bookkeeping integration) handles individual receipts well — snap a photo, FreshBooks parses it. But monthly bank statements, credit card statements, and historical bookkeeping cleanup don't fit that workflow. Freelancers and small business owners trying to import 12 months of historical statements end up either typing each transaction into FreshBooks manually or hiring out the cleanup.
FreshBooks' CSV import path exists but the schema is strict — Date / Description / Amount / Category / Account. Generic PDF-to-CSV tools produce output that needs cleanup before it matches the schema.
PDFExcel converts any document type into a CSV pre-formatted for FreshBooks. Bank statements and credit card statements become an expense-import CSV (Date / Vendor / Amount / Category / Account). Vendor bills become a bill-import CSV. Year-end / quarterly cleanup batches come back as one consolidated CSV per category.
Skip the FreshBooks CSV mapping setup. Drop into FreshBooks → Expenses → Import or Accounting → Bills → Import. Compatible with FreshBooks Classic and the newer FreshBooks (post-2020 redesign). Built-in OCR handles scanned bank statements and faxed bills automatically.
The model knows what FreshBooks expects from expense imports vs bill imports — and that Canadian users need GST/HST split out, while UK users need VAT. Pick the document type + region; the export adapts.
Most FreshBooks-adjacent tools focus on receipt capture (FreshBooks already handles that). PDFExcel handles the gaps — historical statements, monthly cleanup, bank reconciliation when bank-feed sync isn't enough.
Pre-formatted to FreshBooks' expense-import schema. Date / Vendor / Amount / Category / Account ready for the standard import path.
| # | Date | Vendor | Amount | Category | Account | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 03/02/2025 | Adobe Creative Cloud | $54.99 | Software & Tech | Visa ****1248 | |
| 2 | 03/04/2025 | Uber | $32.45 | Travel | Apple Pay | Client meeting downtown |
| 3 | 03/06/2025 | AWS | $284.20 | Software & Tech | Visa ****1248 | Server hosting |
| 4 | 03/09/2025 | WeWork | $650.00 | Office Supplies | ACH | Hot desk March |
| 5 | 03/12/2025 | Stripe Fee | $24.81 | Bank/Payment Fees | ACH | |
| 6 | 03/14/2025 | LinkedIn Premium Business | $59.99 | Subscriptions | Visa ****1248 |
Freelancers running solo consulting practices, small services-business owners, fractional bookkeepers handling FreshBooks clients, FreshBooks-to-FreshBooks migrations or historical clean-ups.
Bank-feed sync misses the credit card statement. Convert monthly Amex PDF to FreshBooks expense-import CSV, import in 3 clicks. Monthly bookkeeping drops from a Sunday afternoon to 20 minutes.
5 small consulting practices on FreshBooks. PDFExcel handles each client's monthly statement that didn't sync. One tool, every client.
Skipped bookkeeping all year. 12 months of statements → 12 monthly CSV imports → categorized in batch in FreshBooks → ready for tax filing in a weekend instead of two weeks.
Yes — both. The expense-import and bill-import schemas are compatible across versions. Choose the schema that matches your FreshBooks instance in step 2 and the export adapts.
Yes. Set the region in step 2 and the export includes the right tax columns — GST/HST split for Canadian users, VAT for UK users, sales tax for U.S. users. FreshBooks imports the tax data into its tax-tracking module.
10 documents per month, free, forever. Most solo freelancers and 1-2-employee shops fit free or Starter ($69/month, 50 docs).
Yes — built-in OCR runs automatically when there's no embedded text layer.
Bench is full-service bookkeeping (they categorize and reconcile for you, monthly fee). PDFExcel is a self-service tool — you upload PDFs, get clean CSVs, do the categorization yourself in FreshBooks. Cheaper if you're willing to do the bookkeeping yourself, especially during year-end cleanup.