Questions and answers

Text-based PDF statements for personal and small business checking accounts from Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, downloaded from the bank's website. All five banks are in beta for now. TD Bank US personal checking and Capital One 360 Checking statements are read too, so far only on statements we made ourselves, and nothing from TD Canada Trust. Each bank has a help page on getting the right file: Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, TD Bank, Capital One.

Yes, on the home page. Choose a folder, several PDFs or a ZIP of PDFs, up to 50 PDFs at a time. Each one is read in your browser, one after another, with the same checks as a single file, and you see one row per file with its result. Open any row to see its full preview. The preview of every statement is free.

Downloading the whole folder as one ZIP, or one combined file per account, is part of Bookkeeper. New downloads count against the 100 in this billing period. Re-downloading within 24 hours of the counted download does not count again in the same billing period while your plan is active. You can also unlock any one statement for $5 from its row.

When the folder holds several statements of the same account, and the statements print the full account number, PaperRows also compares them in date order: each one should open with the balance the one before it closes with, with no gap or shared dates in between. If not, the page warns that a statement may be missing. It is a warning only; each statement still downloads on its own.

Any other bank or credit union, credit card statements, savings, money market and loan statements, statements that combine several accounts in one PDF (except a TD Bank US or Capital One 360 statement with one checking account and a separate savings section, where we read only the checking part), scans and photos, PDFs made by printing a web page, and password-protected PDFs. Each bank has also used statement layouts we do not read yet. The help pages say which layout we read for each bank.

Drop the file in. The preview is free and shows the full table and the checks panel. If we cannot read the file, you get a plain message saying why, with no rows and no buy button. If a check fails, you get the same kind of message, naming the checks that failed, with no rows and no buy button.

A scan is a picture of a page. Reading it means guessing at each character, and one misread digit in an amount is a wrong row in your books. PaperRows only reads the text that is actually in the PDF. If any page has no text in it, the file is refused with "This PDF has pages without readable text". The fix is to download the original PDF from your bank instead of scanning or printing to PDF.

They compare what we read with what the statement prints: opening balance plus deposits minus withdrawals has to equal the closing balance, every numbered page we expect has to have been read, every date has to be inside the statement period, and printed balances and totals have to match the rows.

Matching totals are a strong sign, not proof. Two mistakes can cancel each other out. That is why every row shows the page and line it came from, so you can spot check it.

A row may be missing or misread, so we do not show any of them or offer the file for sale. We never guess a row to make the numbers work. Apart from a missing page, it is our problem, not yours. Write to us with the bank, the statement month and the name of the failed check.

No. The PDF is read by code running in your browser tab. Our server never receives the file, its name, the rows, the amounts or your account number. The CSV you download is built in your browser too.

No. A folder, several PDFs or a ZIP is read in your browser tab, the same way as one PDF. The files, their names and the folder's name stay on your computer. Your browser may still say "upload" when you choose a folder: that is its usual wording for letting a page read files. You can check in the Network tab, as below. Downloading a whole folder sends what one download sends, once per statement you download: your unlock token and that statement's fingerprint.

Three kinds of thing, all described in full in the privacy policy:

• Visit counts from our own counter: events like "a preview finished" or "a file was refused for reason X". Nothing from the document.
• When you pay for or download a statement, a fingerprint of the file (a SHA-256 hash). It lets the $5 unlock work for that one statement and counts Bookkeeper downloads. The file cannot be rebuilt from it. The free preview does not send it.
• Payment details from Stripe, and your unlock token when you download.

Vercel, which hosts the site, sees your IP address like any web host, and keeps logs of requests to our server code, including the URL asked for, for up to 30 days.

Yes. Open your browser's developer tools, go to the Network tab and convert a statement: you will see small requests to our counter and nothing carrying the file. Or load the page and let it finish loading, then turn off your internet connection and drop in a supported statement. After the page and its preview resources have finished loading, you can preview a supported statement offline. Paying and downloading require a connection.

PaperRows sets no cookies while you browse our public pages or use the free preview. No Google Analytics, no ad trackers, no session recording. Our public pages and free preview load scripts from paperrows.com only. Your unlock token, a daily visit key and your light or dark theme choice are kept in your browser's local storage, which you can clear at any time. Payment takes place on a separate Stripe-hosted page, and Stripe's payment pages have their own cookie practices.

Prices are in US dollars. Payment is handled by Stripe. We never see your card number. PaperRows is a product of Fenrir Foundation, so Stripe checkout shows that name.

One PDF file. The price does not depend on page or row count. PaperRows does not set a page-count cap, but we have not established the largest file it can process in a browser. We recognize the file by its exact bytes, so a copy of the same statement you download from your bank again later may count as a new file. Scanned statements are refused before you pay.

Each statement you download counts once toward the 100. Downloading the same statement again within 24 hours of the download that counted, in either format and within the same billing period, does not count again. A download after that counts as a new one.

The count resets when your next billing period starts, and unused statements do not carry over.

After 100 counted downloads, another download that would count needs a separate $5 purchase. There is no automatic overage charge: the page shows the date your count resets and offers the $5 unlock for that one statement. Your $19 plan keeps renewing each month until you cancel.

Click Manage your Bookkeeper plan on the converter page and cancel on the Stripe billing page. That button shows up in the browser you subscribed in. If you do not see it, write to us from the email you paid with. Cancelling stops the next renewal and you keep access until the end of the period you already paid for.

Stripe handles our payments, so the receipt is a Stripe receipt. If you need one, write to us from the email you paid with and say roughly when you paid and how much. We will ask Stripe to send a copy to that address. If it does not show up in your inbox, check your spam or promotions folder.

Because PaperRows is a product of Fenrir Foundation, the company that sells it. That is the name on our Stripe checkout page, so when you buy PaperRows, the payment shows Fenrir Foundation as the seller. The name and the amount alone do not show that a charge was for PaperRows. If you are not sure a charge is yours, write to us with the date and the amount and we will check it.

The unlock is saved in the browser you paid in. A different browser, a private window or cleared browser data will not have it, and a $5 unlock only works for the exact file you paid for.

Once the page confirms your payment, it offers "Copy your unlock link". Open that link in the other browser and drop the same file again: it works there too, a $5 unlock until 24 hours after payment, Bookkeeper while your plan is active. Anyone who has the link can use your unlock, so keep it to yourself, and do not send it to us.

If you did not keep the link, try the same browser and the same file first. If that does not help, write to us from the email you used at checkout and say roughly when you paid. Please do not pay again. Write to us and we will check the charge.

The full rule is on the refund policy page. In short, you get a full refund when:

• a statement from any bank we read, including banks marked Beta, converts with any wrong, missing or extra row,
• we refuse a file after you paid,
• it is your first purchase and you ask within 7 days, for any reason, or
• on Bookkeeper, you did not export a single statement in your latest billing month (that month is refunded).

Find the row in the preview or the plain CSV: the page and line columns tell you where it came from on the statement. Compare it with the PDF. If the row is different, or a transaction on the statement is not there, that is our mistake and you get a full refund. If the rows match the statement but look wrong in QuickBooks, it is more likely the import. See the fixes in the QuickBooks Online import guide. Either way, write to us with the bank, the statement month, the page and line, and what is different, in your own words. Please do not send the statement.

Email hello@asgardagents.com from the address you used at checkout. Say which reason applies. For a wrong row, give the bank, the statement month and the page and line number (they are in the page and line columns of the plain CSV). Do not send the statement. Refunds go back to your card through Stripe. Your bank usually shows them within 5 to 10 business days.

A CSV. Every statement you unlock comes as two CSV files: a plain CSV and a QuickBooks Online CSV. A CSV opens in Excel or any other spreadsheet, but there is no Excel (.xlsx) download. There is no QBO file either. A true .qbo file (the Web Connect format some QuickBooks setups import) is a different format, and PaperRows does not make it. For QuickBooks Online, use the QuickBooks CSV with the "upload from file" option.

A three-column CSV, Date,Description,Amount, for the "upload from file" option in QuickBooks Online. Dates are MM/DD/YYYY and the amount is one signed column, so money in is positive and money out is negative. The QuickBooks Online import guide walks through the upload.

It is not categorised, it has no payee or memo column, and it is not a QBO, OFX or Web Connect file. PaperRows does not connect to QuickBooks or post anything for you. We have not tested it with QuickBooks Desktop, Xero or other tools.

Make sure you uploaded the file ending in -quickbooks.csv, not the plain CSV, and that you are using QuickBooks Online.

If you opened and saved the file in a spreadsheet, download it again from PaperRows and upload that copy instead, because some spreadsheets change dates and amounts when they save. Intuit's instructions limit one upload to 1,000 transactions, so split a bigger file.

When QuickBooks asks, pick the date format MM/dd/yyyy and the one column option for amounts. The import guide has the full list.

If it still fails, write to us with the exact message QuickBooks showed. Please do not attach the CSV.

Not yet. The guide follows Intuit's published instructions and the exact file we write, and it says clearly at the top that we have not run the import ourselves yet. Try one month first.

No. PaperRows turns a statement into rows. What you do with them is up to you and your accountant.

Email hello@asgardagents.com. We read every message and reply to you directly, one to one. Replies come from that shared team mailbox under the name Asgard Agents. We aim to reply within one business day. Tell us the bank, the statement month and the exact message you saw, or the page and line number of a row.

Please do not. We never ask for statements and we do not want them. If one arrives anyway, we delete it without opening it. A description in your own words is where we start.

Maybe. We add banks when enough people ask, and each new layout has to pass the same checks as the first three. Write to us with the bank name and account type. Please do not attach a statement.