Excel Financial Statements to CSV for Analysis

Finance files are built for people to read: merged cells, subtotals and titles. A CSV for analysis needs one header row and one record per line.

Open the Excel to CSV converter

Prepare the sheet first. Keep one header row, remove title rows, merged cells and subtotal lines, and make sure the data you want is on the first sheet. Only the first sheet of an .xlsx file is read, and old .xls files must be saved as .xlsx first.

Open the Excel to CSV converter and drop the workbook. Keep account codes as text so 001200 does not become 1200. Check that negative numbers kept their sign and that dates are in one format.

Then reconcile. Add up a column in the CSV and compare it with the Excel total, and compare the row count with the sheet. Use Data Comparison to compare this month with last month and see which accounts changed.

Everything runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.

Open the Excel to CSV converter

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How to use the Excel to CSV converter: step by step

  1. Remove titles, merged cells and subtotals.
  2. Open the Excel to CSV converter and drop the workbook.
  3. Check account codes and negative numbers.
  4. Download CSV and compare totals with Excel.

When to use the Excel to CSV converter

  • Load a ledger into a database
  • Compare two periods of a trial balance
  • Prepare statements for analysis
  • Hand a flat file to an auditor

Example

Input: A Excel file with the columns id, name and age.

Output: id,name,age 1,Ada,36 2,Alan,41

Frequently asked questions

How do I convert Excel to CSV?

Drop your Excel file (or paste the data), check the options, click Convert and download the CSV result.

How big can a file be?

It depends on your device. A few hundred MB usually works.

Which conversions does the Format Converter support?

Any direction between JSON, CSV, Parquet and Excel (.xlsx), for one file or a whole folder. Nested JSON is flattened into columns such as address.city. For Excel, the first sheet is read; old .xls files are not supported.

Why did my number or date change after converting?

Types are detected from the values. Turn off "Detect types" to keep everything as text, which also keeps leading zeros in IDs and phone numbers.

Tip: Compare one column total with Excel. A match is quick proof that no rows were lost.