Import a Bank Statement Into Clio Accounting

Plaid feeds, and when you need a file upload

Clio Accounting connects to your bank through Plaid, which syncs transactions automatically for the reconciliation work at the heart of a law firm's books. But not every bank integrates with Plaid, and when yours does not, the automatic feed is not an option. Clio's answer is a bank file upload: institutions that Plaid does not support can import their transactions from a file instead. The catch is that banks hand you a PDF statement, which Clio cannot read. Converting that PDF to a CSV gives you the file the upload accepts, so a firm on an unsupported bank, or one that needs history from before the feed was connected, can still get its transactions into Clio.

Uploading a statement in Clio Accounting

The upload lives in the Banking area. In Clio Accounting go to Banking and click Upload transactions, or choose Banking, then Add account, then Upload transactions. Click Choose File, select the CSV you converted from your statement, and open it. Clio then lets you upload to a new bank account, where you give it a descriptive name, and once the file is in you review and match the transactions against your Clio records. Because a converted statement comes out with clean, consistent columns, the review step is a confirmation rather than a cleanup of a raw bank export.

Operating accounts: two-way reconciliation

Firm operating accounts reconcile two ways: you compare the bank's records against the corresponding ledger in Clio and confirm every statement transaction has a matching record. The workflow is to match the uploaded or fed transactions first, then run the reconciliation once everything ties. A converted statement is useful here even when a Plaid feed exists, because it gives you the bank's own record to check the feed against, so a missing or miscategorized transaction shows up before it distorts the reconciliation. Clean, complete data going in is what keeps an operating reconciliation quick.

Trust accounts: three-way reconciliation and IOLTA

Trust accounts carry a higher bar. Most state bars require a monthly three-way reconciliation where three balances must agree: the trust bank statement balance, the sum of the individual client trust ledgers, and the running trust ledger in Clio. Converting the trust account statement gives you the bank side of that tie-out in sortable form, so matching each cleared item to a client ledger is a filter rather than a page-by-page read. IOLTA compliance also depends on documenting a transfer in Clio before the funds move at the bank and matching the transferred amount to the documented earned fee, and a clean transaction record makes those movements easy to verify.

Client data and privacy

A law firm's bank records, especially a trust account, hold client funds and sensitive matter detail, so how the data is handled matters. Statements are processed to build the CSV and then deleted automatically, with nothing retained on a server afterward, which keeps client trust data out of a third-party tool. For a firm or its bookkeeper importing into Clio for several accounts or entities, bulk conversion turns a stack of statements into upload-ready files in one pass, so bringing unsupported-bank or historical activity into Clio stays fast and stays compliant.

Frequently Asked Questions