Convert any PDF — bank statements, credit card statements, vendor bills, expense receipts — into a CSV pre-formatted for Wave's transaction import. Built for the tiny-business and freelancer community on Wave's free accounting tier.
Wave Accounting's free tier is genuinely free — but the bank-feed coverage is limited and connections drop frequently. Wave users running a tight bookkeeping budget end up importing CSVs manually for the months bank-feed sync didn't cover, plus historical cleanup, plus credit card statements that aren't well-supported by Wave's connector.
Wave's CSV import schema is strict (Date / Description / Amount, plus optional Account and Note columns). Generic PDF-to-CSV tools produce output that almost-matches but needs cleanup — exactly the manual work Wave users were trying to avoid by going to Wave in the first place.
PDFExcel converts any PDF into a CSV pre-formatted for Wave's transaction import. Bank statements, credit card statements, and vendor bills come out with Date / Description / Amount / Account / Note matching Wave's schema. Negative amounts (withdrawals/expenses) and positive amounts (deposits/income) are signed correctly so Wave classifies them right on import.
Skip the CSV cleanup step. Drop the export into Wave → Accounting → Transactions → Upload a Bank Statement or Credit Card Statement. Free PDFExcel + free Wave is a complete tiny-business bookkeeping workflow with no monthly cost until you exceed 10 documents/month.
The model knows Wave's amount-signing convention (positive for credits / income, negative for debits / expenses) and applies it automatically — no post-export sign-flipping needed.
Wave is free, PDFExcel is free for the typical tiny-business document volume. Together they're a complete free bookkeeping workflow with no surprise costs.
Date / Description / Amount / Account in Wave's expected format. Signed amounts so Wave classifies income vs expense automatically.
| # | Date | Description | Amount | Account | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 03/03/2025 | STRIPE PAYMENTS — CLIENT PAYOUT | 1842.00 | Business Checking | Invoice 218 |
| 2 | 03/05/2025 | ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD | -54.99 | Business Checking | Software |
| 3 | 03/08/2025 | WEWORK MEMBERSHIP — MARCH | -650.00 | Business Checking | Office space |
| 4 | 03/12/2025 | ZELLE FROM J. LIM — INVOICE 219 | 640.00 | Business Checking | |
| 5 | 03/15/2025 | AWS — MONTHLY HOSTING | -284.20 | Business Checking | Server costs |
Freelancers running solo on Wave's free tier, side-hustle owners, very-small services businesses, students/early-stage entrepreneurs minimizing bookkeeping costs.
Wave's bank-feed sync misses the second month in a row. Convert two months of statements at once with PDFExcel free tier, import to Wave, get caught up in 15 minutes.
Tracks personal-use card with mixed business expenses. Convert monthly statement, filter business-related rows, import only those into Wave for Schedule C tracking.
First annual tax filing — needs 12 months of bookkeeping done in a month. Free Wave + free PDFExcel = complete workflow done in a weekend, no monthly software cost.
Yes. The CSV uses Wave's exact schema (Date / Description / Amount / Account / Note) with signed amounts. Drop into Wave → Accounting → Transactions → Upload a Bank Statement and import.
10 documents per month, free, forever. Most tiny businesses on Wave (1-3 statements per month) fit comfortably in the free tier indefinitely. If you scale up, plans from $69/month for 50 documents.
Yes. Convert via the same workflow — Wave treats credit card accounts as a separate account type in its chart of accounts. Set the Account column to your card's nickname in Wave to route the import to the right account.
Yes — built-in OCR runs automatically when there's no embedded text layer. Same workflow, same Wave-ready CSV.
Wave is the free option for very-small businesses. FreshBooks is paid but better for client-billing workflows; QuickBooks is paid and more powerful for growing businesses. PDFExcel works with all three. Pick the accounting system that fits your business size and use PDFExcel as the document-extraction layer regardless.