Two places your Bank of America data lives
Online Banking keeps transaction data in two separate places, and they do not offer the same formats:
- Activity — the running list of transactions on a checking, savings or credit card account. This is the only place with a real CSV export (Quicken QFX and QuickBooks QBO are offered in the same dialog). This is what you want for ScanCompte.
- Statements & Documents — the official monthly statements, available as PDF only. No CSV conversion is offered there.
Download your activity as a CSV (recommended)
- Sign in to bankofamerica.com from a desktop browser. The mobile app is built for viewing and sharing PDFs, and does not reliably offer the CSV export.
- From Accounts, open the account you want to export.
- Open the Activity tab (the transaction list for that account).
- Click the Download link above the transaction list.
- Pick your date range — a statement cycle or a custom range — and choose Spreadsheet (.CSV) as the file type.
- Confirm the download and save the file to your computer.
Formats and limits worth knowing
The activity export window is not unlimited: expect roughly 12 to 18 months of transactions depending on the account type, which is plenty for spotting recurring charges. Bank of America also keeps your PDF statements online for at least 18 months, so anything older is retrieved as a PDF rather than a CSV.
Two details that trip people up: credit card exports and checking exports do not always carry the same columns (a running balance may be missing on card files), and very long ranges are best split into two exports. If your CSV opens with mangled columns in Excel, import it through Data > Get Data > From Text/CSV instead of double-clicking the file.
If you also bank elsewhere, the process is close to what we describe in our guide on exporting a Chase bank statement — the CSV download sits behind the Activity tab there too.
Analyze your Bank of America statement
Once you have your CSV — or the PDF statement, which works too — upload it to ScanCompte. Your spending is categorized automatically and forgotten subscriptions are flagged. We never connect to your bank, and your file is deleted within 24 hours.
