Starling Bank Statement to Excel: Step-by-Step Guide

TL;DR To get a Starling Bank statement into Excel, start with the PDF statement for each month (or the date range you need), convert it so every transaction sits on its own row with a single signed amount, and confirm that the opening balance plus all transactions equals the closing balance. Treat money moved into and out of Spaces as internal transfers rather than income or spending, keep UK dates in DD/MM/YYYY so Excel doesn't swap days and months, and keep the original PDFs alongside your spreadsheet. Once the balance check passes, the data is ready for a budget, Self Assessment, a mortgage application, or an import into Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent.

Starling is one of the UK's app-based banks, used by individuals, sole traders and limited companies. The app is pleasant for day-to-day banking, but sooner or later most people need their transactions in a spreadsheet: to prepare a tax return, catch up on bookkeeping, show a lender twelve months of income, or simply work out where the money went.

This guide walks through how Starling statements are usually laid out, which file to start from, how to convert a PDF into clean rows, how to deal with Spaces and card payments, a full worked example, and the problems people run into most often. Starling updates its app regularly, so we describe the options in general terms rather than giving exact menu paths that may be out of date by the time you read this.

What a Starling statement contains

A Starling statement is a record of one account over a period. Whatever the exact layout, it normally shows:

• Account details: the account name, sort code and account number.
• The period covered: a start date and an end date.
• An opening balance and a closing balance. These two figures are the anchor for every check you'll do in Excel.
• A list of transactions, each with a date, a description (often the merchant or the payer's name and a reference), the amount paid in or out, and usually a running balance after each line.

Starling has a feature called Spaces, which lets you set money aside inside your account for bills, savings goals or tax. Moving money into a Space takes it out of your main balance; moving it back adds it again. How these movements appear on a statement matters a lot for the spreadsheet, and we cover it in Step 2.

Personal, joint, sole trader and limited company accounts all follow the same basic logic. Business accounts may have extra features such as invoicing or integrations, but a transaction is still a transaction: a date, a description and an amount.

PDF statement or CSV export?

Depending on your account and the current version of the app, Starling may let you download statements as PDF and transaction data in a spreadsheet-friendly format such as CSV. Check what your account offers. Each has its place.

PDF statements are the official, human-readable record. They show the period, the opening and closing balances, and look like a bank statement. If a lender, letting agent, accountant or the Home Office asks for "bank statements", this is what they mean.

CSV exports are easier to open in Excel because each transaction is already a row. However, check what's included. A CSV of transactions may not show an opening and closing balance in the same way, and it may include or exclude Space movements differently from the PDF. Treat a CSV as convenient raw data, not proof.

A practical rule:

• For analysis and bookkeeping, use whichever file is easiest to convert, but keep the PDF for each month as your reference for the opening and closing figures.
• For anything you have to prove, send the PDF statements and use your spreadsheet only as a working tool or a summary.

If you only have PDFs, perhaps because you're catching up on old months or an accountant sent them to you, you'll need to convert them. That's the next section.

Converting a Starling PDF to rows

You have three realistic options.

Copy and paste. Select the transaction table in a PDF viewer and paste it into Excel. It sometimes works for a single page, but it often merges columns, splits long descriptions over two rows, or pastes amounts as text. For more than a page or two, it's slow and error-prone.

Power Query. Excel for Windows (Microsoft 365) can import tables from a PDF using Get Data. It works well on some statements and poorly on others, depending on how the PDF was built. Our Power Query bank statement guide explains the steps and the cleanup you'll need.

A converter built for bank statements. SheetStatement reads the PDF, produces one row per transaction with a signed amount, and checks the opening and closing balances before you export to Excel or CSV. The free plan includes 3 pages a month, which is enough to test it on a real statement; Starter ($9), Pro ($19) and Business ($39) monthly plans handle more volume.

Whichever route you take, aim for this layout:

Use a single Amount column with money in as positive and money out as negative. If your file has separate "In" and "Out" columns, combine them with a formula such as =C2-D2 (In minus Out), or see our guide to separating debit and credit columns if you need to go the other way. The Source file column, something like starling-2026-03.pdf, makes it easy to trace any row back to its statement later.

Step 1: check the balance

Before you do anything else, prove the data is complete. For each statement:

=ROUND(Opening + SUM(Amount) - Closing, 2)

The answer should be exactly zero. If it isn't, something is missing, duplicated, or has the wrong sign. Use the size of the difference as a clue:

• The difference equals one transaction. A row was dropped, often at a page break.
• The difference is twice a transaction. A sign is flipped: a payment was recorded as money in, or the reverse.
• The difference equals a Space movement. Space transfers are being treated inconsistently (see Step 2).

If your data has a running balance column, a row-by-row check finds the exact line where things go wrong. With balances in column E and amounts in column D, starting on row 3:

=ROUND(E2 + D3 - E3, 2)

Fill it down. The first non-zero result is where the problem starts. Our guide to finding reconciliation discrepancies has more techniques if the error is stubborn.

Do this for every month. A balance check that passes is the single best evidence your spreadsheet matches the bank.

Step 2: deal with Spaces

Spaces are the part of Starling that causes the most confusion in spreadsheets, because they're movements of your own money inside the same account.

Think of each Space as a separate pot. When you move £200 into a "Tax" Space, your main balance falls by £200, but you haven't spent anything. When you move it back, your main balance rises by £200, but you haven't earned anything.

In the spreadsheet:

1. Keep the rows. If Space movements appear on the statement and affect the balance shown, you need them for the balance check to pass.
2. Label them clearly. Add a column called Type and mark these rows as Transfer – Space.
3. Exclude them from income and spending totals. When you build a budget or a profit figure, filter out transfers so you don't count your own money twice.

If you're tracking the Spaces themselves, for example to show how much you've set aside for tax, you can build a small table per Space: opening amount, money in, money out, closing amount. That mirrors how you'd treat a separate savings account.

The key is consistency. If some months include Space movements and others don't, or a CSV export treats them differently from the PDF, the balance check will tell you. Don't force it to zero by deleting rows; find out which file is telling the whole story.

Step 3: fix UK dates and amounts

Starling statements use UK conventions: dates are day/month/year and amounts are in pounds with a full stop as the decimal point. Problems appear when the spreadsheet software assumes something else.

Dates. If your Excel or Google Sheets is set to a US locale, 03/04/2026 may be read as 4 March rather than 3 April, and dates like 25/04/2026 may stay as text because there's no 25th month. Signs of trouble:

• Some dates are right-aligned (real dates) and others left-aligned (text).
• Sorting by date gives a strange order.
• Monthly totals look wrong.

The safest fix is to import the file with the correct locale, or split the text and rebuild the date explicitly:

=DATE(RIGHT(A2,4), MID(A2,4,2), LEFT(A2,2))

This assumes the text is in the form DD/MM/YYYY. Our guide to fixing bank statement dates in Excel covers other formats and the Text to Columns method.

Amounts. Copied amounts sometimes carry a £ sign, thousands separators, or a trailing space, which turns them into text. Strip the symbol and convert:

=VALUE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(D2,"£",""),",",""))

Check by summing the column. If SUM returns zero or a suspiciously small number, some values are still text.

Step 4: add categories

Once the balance check passes, add the columns you'll need for analysis:

• Category, such as Groceries, Rent, Travel, Software, Sales.
• Type, such as Income, Expense, Transfer – Space, Transfer – Own account.
• Month, using =TEXT(A2,"yyyy-mm") so you can summarise by period.
• Notes, for anything you'll need to explain later.

For a few months of personal spending, typing categories by hand is fine. For a year of business transactions, a keyword lookup saves time. Put a small table of keywords and categories on another sheet, then use a formula to match descriptions. Our guide to Excel formulas for categorising transactions shows a reliable pattern.

Then summarise with a pivot table or SUMIFS:

=SUMIFS(Amount, Category, "Groceries", Month, "2026-03")

A worked example

Here's a simplified March statement for a sole trader's Starling account. The numbers are invented to illustrate the process.

Statement header: opening balance £1,240.00, closing balance £1,872.50.

The balance check. The amounts sum to 1,500 − 300 − 64.20 − 18 − 12 + 450 − 90 − 850 + 100 − 83.30 = 632.50. Opening £1,240.00 plus £632.50 equals £1,872.50, which matches the closing balance. The check returns zero, so nothing is missing.

Tagging the Space movements. Three rows are Space transfers: −300, −90 and +100. Mark them Transfer – Space. Their net effect is −290.

Working out real income and spending.

• Income: £1,500 + £450 = £1,950.
• Expenses: £64.20 + £18 + £12 + £850 + £83.30 = £1,027.50.
• Net Space transfers: −£290.

Check: £1,950 − £1,027.50 − £290 = £632.50, the same as the total movement. Everything is accounted for.

Separating business and personal. The supermarket shop and rent may be personal; the software subscription, phone and train ticket might be partly or wholly business. Whether and how much you can claim depends on the rules for your situation, which is a question for HMRC guidance or your accountant. If you mix business and personal spending in one account, our guide to separating personal and business transactions shows a practical tagging approach.

Notice that if you'd counted the £300 and £90 Space transfers as spending, March would look £390 more expensive than it really was, and the £100 back from the Holiday Space might be mistaken for income. That's the most common mistake with Starling data.

Business accounts and accounting software

If you run a business through Starling, you may be planning to get the transactions into accounting software rather than leaving them in Excel.

Bank feeds. Starling has offered connections with popular UK accounting tools. A live feed is the easiest way to keep things up to date going forward, but feeds usually only go back a limited time, and they don't help if you need to rebuild earlier periods or check what was imported.

CSV imports. Most accounting software accepts a CSV of bank transactions. The usual requirements are a date column, a description, and either a single amount or separate paid-in and paid-out columns. Each package has its own quirks:

• Xero: see our Xero CSV import format guide.
• QuickBooks Online: see importing bank statements into QuickBooks Online.
• FreeAgent: see importing bank statements into FreeAgent.

Avoiding duplicates. If a feed is already connected, importing a CSV for the same dates will usually create duplicates. Decide on a cut-over date: statements (converted) before it, the feed after it. Our guide to QuickBooks duplicate transactions after import explains the clean-up if it's already happened.

Spaces in bookkeeping. In accounting software, a Space movement usually isn't income or an expense. Depending on how your software sees the account, it may not appear at all, or it may need to be recorded as a transfer. Make sure your bookkeeping and your statements agree on the closing balance at each month end.

Using Starling statements for mortgages and tax

Mortgages and rentals. Lenders and letting agents commonly ask for recent statements to check income, outgoings and sometimes the source of a deposit. Send the official PDFs in the format they request. Your spreadsheet is still useful: it helps you spot things a lender may ask about, like large transfers in, gambling transactions, or missed payments, before they do. Our guide to bank statements for a mortgage application explains what underwriters generally look at.

Self Assessment. If you're a sole trader, your bank statements are part of the records behind your tax return. A categorised spreadsheet makes it much easier to total income and allowable expenses for the tax year, which in the UK runs from 6 April to 5 April. Use the Month column, or a Tax Year column, so you don't accidentally include March transactions from the wrong year. For VAT-registered businesses, our guide to preparing a VAT return from bank statements covers the extra steps.

This is general information, not tax or financial advice. Rules depend on your circumstances; check HMRC guidance or speak to an accountant.

Common problems

The balance check fails by a small amount. Usually a fee, interest credit or a single card payment was missed, often where a page break splits the table. Use the running balance check to find it.

Pending card payments. If you export transactions from the app, recent card payments may not be final yet, and the final amount can differ from the pending amount, especially for things like hotel or fuel pre-authorisations. Statements generally reflect settled transactions. For bookkeeping, work from statements for completed months.

Foreign currency card spending. If you used your Starling card abroad, the statement shows the amount taken from your account in pounds. The original foreign amount may be in the description. Use the sterling figure for the balance check.

Refunds. A refund appears as money in, usually with the merchant's name. Categorise it against the same category as the original purchase so your spending totals are net of refunds rather than showing a false "income" line.

Descriptions split over two lines. Long references can wrap in the PDF and land on two rows after a copy and paste. Combine them before categorising; our guide to cleaning bank statement data in Excel shows how.

Joint accounts. If two people use the account, add a Person column where it matters, such as for splitting bills. The balance check still applies to the account as a whole.

Several months at once. Convert each month separately, check each one, then stack them. Our guide to combining multiple bank statements in Excel explains how to keep the source file and avoid overlaps.

A short checklist

Before you rely on your Starling spreadsheet:

1. One row per transaction, with a single signed Amount column.
2. Dates are real dates, in the right order, with day and month the right way round.
3. Every statement passes Opening + SUM(Amount) = Closing.
4. Space movements are tagged as transfers and excluded from income and spending.
5. Refunds are netted against their categories.
6. The original PDFs are saved with clear names next to the spreadsheet.

Convert your Starling statements to Excel

Upload a Starling statement PDF to SheetStatement, check the opening and closing balances, and export to Excel or CSV. The free plan covers 3 pages a month, so you can see the result on a real statement before deciding on a paid plan.

FAQ

Can I download a Starling statement as Excel?

Starling may offer a spreadsheet-friendly export such as CSV, depending on your account and app version, which Excel opens directly. If you only have PDF statements, you'll need to convert them so each transaction becomes a row.

Should I use the PDF or the CSV for my accountant?

Many accountants are happy with a reconciled spreadsheet for bookkeeping, but they may still want the PDF statements as the official record. Provide both if in doubt.

How do I handle Starling Spaces in Excel?

Keep Space movements as rows so the balance check works, tag them as internal transfers, and exclude them from income and spending totals.

Why are my Starling dates wrong in Excel?

Starling uses UK day/month/year dates. If your spreadsheet uses a US locale, days and months can swap or stay as text. Import with a UK locale or rebuild the date with the DATE function.

Can I use converted statements for a mortgage application?

Lenders usually want the official PDF statements, not a spreadsheet you created. Use your spreadsheet to review your finances, and send the PDFs they ask for.

How do I import Starling transactions into Xero or QuickBooks?

Use the bank feed for current transactions, and a checked CSV for earlier periods, with a clear cut-over date so nothing is imported twice.

Is it safe to upload bank statements to a converter?

Read the provider's security and privacy policy first. See SheetStatement's security page for how files are handled.

How much does SheetStatement cost?

The free plan includes 3 pages a month. Paid plans are Starter at $9 a month, Pro at $19 and Business at $39.