HSBC US statements: how to download them and turn them into clean data

An HSBC Bank USA monthly statement can cover several deposit accounts at once: checking, savings and certificates of deposit each have their own account number and their own section in the PDF. Each holds a single US dollar balance. Selfirm reads every section.

What HSBC US provides, and what Selfirm reads

File	Format	In Selfirm
Monthly deposit statement (checking, savings, CDs)	PDF	Read
Credit card statements	PDF	Not read

How to download the statement

HSBC’s eStatements page says you can view, download or print an electronic copy of your statement from HSBC Online Banking, and that deposit statements stay available for up to seven years. The page does not list the menu steps, and HSBC US has been changing its online banking screens, so we have not confirmed the current menu names.

In general: log on to HSBC Online Banking or the HSBC US app, open the account, and look for the statements or documents area. Choose the month and download the PDF. If you have several deposit accounts on one statement, one download covers all of them.

What the file looks like

Several accounts in one file. Each account has a section, and the account number is printed in the section heading as ACCOUNT NUMBER. The transaction rows themselves do not repeat it.

The columns are long and unsigned. The table headers are DATE POSTED, DESCRIPTION OF TRANSACTIONS, DEPOSITS & OTHER ADDITIONS, WITHDRAWALS & OTHER SUBTRACTIONS and BALANCE. Money in and money out are separate columns, both without a sign.

Dates are month/day/two-digit year, such as 03/05/26 for 5 March 2026.

A date is printed once per day. From the second transaction on the same day, the DATE POSTED cell is blank.

Page breaks lose the date. The first row after a page break can appear with no date. It belongs to the last date on the previous page, not to a new day.

Opening and closing balances are rows. The beginning and ending balances each take a line that has a balance and no amount. A converter that treats every line as a transaction either fails on them or records two empty movements.

Example

Fictional data, one section of a statement:

ACCOUNT NUMBER (checking)

DATE POSTED	DESCRIPTION OF TRANSACTIONS	DEPOSITS & OTHER ADDITIONS	WITHDRAWALS & OTHER SUBTRACTIONS	BALANCE
03/01/26	Beginning Balance			4,000.00
03/05/26	ACH CREDIT SAMPLE CLIENT INC	2,000.00		6,000.00
	DEBIT CARD EXAMPLE HARDWARE		300.00	5,700.00
03/20/26	ONLINE TRANSFER TO SAVINGS		1,000.00	4,700.00
03/31/26	Ending Balance			4,700.00

Read correctly:

Date	Description	Amount (USD)	Balance
2026-03-05	ACH CREDIT SAMPLE CLIENT INC	2,000.00	6,000.00
2026-03-05	DEBIT CARD EXAMPLE HARDWARE	-300.00	5,700.00
2026-03-20	ONLINE TRANSFER TO SAVINGS	-1,000.00	4,700.00

The undated row takes the date above it, and the two balance lines are used to check the month rather than imported as movements.

Bringing it into Selfirm

Selfirm is in early access. You upload the PDF as HSBC sent it, or a folder of statements at once. Selfirm recognises it as an HSBC US statement and reads each section as its own account.

It checks that the beginning balance, plus deposits, minus withdrawals, equals the ending balance, and that each month starts where the previous one ended. Rows repeated across overlapping files are counted once. A transfer from checking to savings appears on both sides, so Selfirm proposes it as one transfer between your own accounts instead of an expense and an income. Each movement is classified as income, expense or transfer for you to confirm, and every figure links back to the page and row of the PDF.

Exporting to CSV or Beancount is planned, not available today. Join the waitlist to try it.

The other US institution Selfirm reads is Interactive Brokers.