Guides

Plain-English guides to the codes on bank and card statements, and how to clean them up.

• What does SQ * mean on a bank statement? - SQ * on a bank or card statement means the payment went through Square. How to read the rest of the line and find the real merchant name.
• What does TST* mean on a bank statement? - TST* on a card statement means the payment was taken with Toast, a point-of-sale system used by restaurants. How to read the line.
• What does PAYPAL * mean on a bank statement? - PAYPAL * on a bank or card statement means you paid a seller through PayPal. How to find the real merchant behind the charge.
• What does SP * mean on a bank statement? - SP * on a card statement commonly means an online store that takes payments through Shopify Payments. How to read the rest of the line.
• What does POS DEBIT or POS PURCHASE mean on a bank statement? - POS DEBIT and POS PURCHASE mean a debit card payment made at a point of sale. What the codes and numbers around them usually are.
• What do ACH and CHECKCARD mean on a bank statement? - ACH means an electronic bank transfer; CHECKCARD means a debit card purchase at some banks. How to read and clean these lines.
• How to clean bank transaction descriptions - A practical guide to turning raw bank and card descriptors into clean merchant names and categories, by hand, in a spreadsheet or with an API.

Need a CSV first? RowSmith turns PDF bank statements into CSV or Excel in your browser.