Safe Online PDF to OFX Conversion site

[John Felstead]

I use iCreateOFX Basic to convert some of my credit card statements for import into MS Money. However Sainsburys Bank only facilitates downloads of pdf statements. 

Can anyone recommend a SAFE and preferably free online service to convert a pdf statement into OFX file? I use a lot of online PDF tools for other tasks like splitting and rotating etc but not financial information

John

[Cal Learner]

You got me wondering what safe would mean to you. I was going to write more, but decided not to at this point.

https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/discussions/online-banking/1247388-which-uk-based-banks-support-ofx-download has some discussion and a link to a list of UK banks that provided download (at the time of writing the lists) of OFX, QFX , or QIF files with transactions. You may have reasons to stick with Sainsburys. If you want to download QFX into Money, there are a few easy ways, but OFX and QIF are natively supported.

[Mark Fields]

I have zero experience with OFX, but as for PDF creation I use software called Power PDF which is now supplied by a company named Kofax

I have version 2.0 but they are up to version 4.0

It is very affordable compared to Adobe.  I can import a scanned document and it will convert to a PDF, Word, Excel and others. It has OCR capability too.

Sometime I’ll grab a screenshot, convert it with OCR and make an Excel file or if it’s a Word document with columns change it to Excel. 

I’ve already taken a CSV document and imported to EXCEL and then converted to PDF

If there’s a way to use OFX and reduce entry I’m interested.

Mark Fields

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 5, 2025, at 8:23 AM, John Felstead <jfel...@gmail.com> wrote:

I use iCreateOFX Basic to convert some of my credit card statements for import into MS Money. However Sainsburys Bank only facilitates downloads of pdf statements. 

Can anyone recommend a SAFE and preferably free online service to convert a pdf statement into OFX file? I use a lot of online PDF tools for other tasks like splitting and rotating etc but not financial information

John

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[John Felstead]

Hi Mark,

OFX or Open Financial Exchange is a file format supported by a number of banks which allows you to download your statement/transactions electronically. It is natively supported by Microsoft Money and I use it to directly import transactions from my bank into Money. My credit card is with Sainsburys Bank, primarily due to the savings we get as we shop almost exclusively with Sainsburys Supermarket and fuel stations. Unfortunately Sainsbury's only provide PDF statements and not OFX downloads like Barclays. 

There are converters that allow you to convert a PDF sttement to an OFX file so you can import into money. Many of the desktop versions range from £19.99 per month subscription to £600 outright payment which is unaffordable for what I need. Conversely there are online platforms which will convert an uploaded PDF to OFX format. However whilst I am happy to upload pdfs of general topics like user manuals etc, uploading bank statements with confidential information is different and could be used for fraud and scamming if the information was not encrypted.

[Rahul Oza]

Hi John,

I have written something for my own usage, it includes some UK institutions not Sainsburys though. 

You can copy my code or else I can write one for you if you want - https://github.com/RahulOza/OFXConversion

Regards,

Rahul

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[John Felstead]

Thanks Cal, 

As I have explained to Mark our secondary credit card is with Sainsburys as they offer discounts in store and off fuel purchased from their filling stations so would not want to change that just for downloadable transactions. because all of our vehicle fuel and groceries are put on this credit card its a large proportion of our outgoings and I would prefer it monitored within M Money. There are desktop software applications to convert PDF to OFX but these range from £19.99 per month subscription to £600 outright payment which is unaffordable for what I need. Conversely there are online platforms (many free) which will convert an uploaded PDF to OFX format. However whilst I am happy to upload pdfs of general topics like user manuals, contract terms etc, uploading bank statements with confidential financial information is different and could be used for fraud and scamming if the information was not encrypted. I was seeking views from M Money users if anyone has found a secure website, possibly with a small subscription, which offers encrypted or password protected conversion methods.

Many thanks

John

[Dan Adkins]

John, you may have already considered this, but here goes...
I doubt you need to track specific purchases of gasoline and groceries, so you could set up a recurring split bill to reconcile with your monthly Sainsburys Bank statement, that would make this all so much simpler.

"Sainsburys Bank ▓ autoDebit"

transfer from "XXX checking" acct to "Sainsburys Credit Card"     140.00

split Categories

Groceries   monthly total @ Sainsburys        60.00

Gasoline     monthly total @ Sainsburys       80.00

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[Cal Learner]

John, if one of the other Sainsbury credit card users was developing something along those lines, it would be possible that it would be easier to parse the HTML rather than the PDF. I will say that either way, it would be rather specific to a particular card, so the number of customers of that utility would be limited. Instead you would want somebody who would be making it somewhat for personal use, and that somebody could potentially let you ride along. Something made to parse one PDF is not likely to be able to parse a PDF from a different provider.

For fun, you could try copying the PDF statement with Ctrl+A and paste into an empty spreadsheet.

Then on the website, copy some stuff, and paste that into an empty spreadsheet. Which makes more sense in the spreadsheet initially? I am not suggesting that you carry that farther. This would just be some background info that you might find of interest.

I am just thinking about how I would do it... I am not going to do it however. I am fortunate that one of my credit cards actually provides a server that delivers OFX/QFX to software I use, and the other lets me download OFX/QFX files.  If those were not available, I would be thinking more about actually doing something.

I will also say that it would be easer to produce QIF than OFX if somebody was doing the parsing. OFX is much better for broker accounts, but QIF files are adequate for credit cards.

[John Felstead]

Many thanks Dan, This seems a very sensible a neat way to deal with the issue. All we need to do is look at the Sainsburys statement each month and do a split entry as you suggested. It avoids having to create another account in Money for this credit card but allows the spend to be correctly allocated. Many thanks

John

[John Felstead]

Many thanks Cal,

I like your suggestion and might even try this when I have a moment but have decided that what Ameridan has suggested is the cleanest option so far. 

As an aside I have put Rahul in touch with the developer of iCreateOFX who may be able to work together to use Rahul's script in Philips executable. Who know this might be of help to others in the future who only have pdf statements from their financial institution.