Convert a Card Statement to Import Into Emburse

When Emburse needs a manual import

Emburse is expense management, and for company cards the usual flow is an automatic card feed that drops charges straight into the expense wallet. The manual path matters for the cases a feed does not cover: a personal or small-business card used for work, older charges that predate the feed, or transactions the feed simply missed. In those cases you bring the card statement in yourself, and since a statement arrives as a PDF, converting it to a CSV is what turns it into something Emburse can take.

Emburse Spend: CSV or OFX statement upload

Emburse Spend has a direct statement upload. In the Upload Transactions pop-up you can download a CSV template, format your card transactions to match it, then drag and drop the file or choose Import File to bring them in. It accepts CSV or OFX, so a statement downloaded as OFX from a card portal works, and so does a CSV you build to the template. A converted statement gives you clean, column-separated rows that line up against that template instead of a raw export you have to reshape.

Emburse Professional: CSV import or copy/paste

Emburse Professional, the Certify and Abacus side, offers two manual routes for companies not using its card integration. The Credit Card Import Tool takes a CSV of your charges and turns them into expenses in your wallet. There is also a copy-and-paste import: you copy the expense lines from your online statement and paste them into the box provided, one expense per line. Converting the PDF first gives you tidy rows to feed the import tool, or clean lines to paste, rather than wrestling with a statement's original layout.

Turning a card statement into the right file

Whichever Emburse product you are on, the input is the same shape: a clean list of card transactions with a date, an amount, and a description. A PDF statement hides that inside a page layout, so converting it pulls the charges out as separate columns you can save as CSV for the import tool or the Spend template, or line up for the copy-and-paste box. The point is to hand Emburse well-formed transactions so each one becomes an expense without hand-correction.

Accuracy and privacy

Because these charges become expense claims, the amounts and dates have to be right, so every transaction is reviewable in the converter before export. The output arrives as a clean CSV ready for the Spend template or the Professional import tool. Since a card statement holds real account activity, the file is processed to build the CSV and then deleted automatically, with nothing kept on a server afterward, which matters for something that feeds a company's books.

Frequently Asked Questions