How to Import Bank Statements into MYOB

MYOB accepts a narrow set of file formats for manual bank statement import, and the exact formats depend on which product tier you're using:

MYOB Product	Accepted Import Formats
MYOB Business	QIF, OFX
MYOB AccountRight	OFX, QFX, QIF, OFC
MYOB Essentials	QIF only

None of these products natively accept CSV or PDF bank statements. If your bank exports statements in either of those formats, you need to convert them to a supported file type before MYOB will let you import anything.

MYOB Business also enforces a 10MB file size limit on statement imports, which can be a constraint when you're working with lengthy transaction histories or consolidated multi-account files.

This format gap is where most of the friction lives. Banks in Australia and New Zealand commonly provide transaction exports as CSV files or, for older records, PDF statements only. When you need to import bank statements into MYOB and the file you have is neither QIF nor OFX, you're stuck in a conversion step that the software doesn't handle for you.

For bookkeepers managing multiple clients across different banks and MYOB product tiers, this format mismatch is one of the most common sources of unnecessary manual work.

Bank Feeds or Manual Import: Choosing the Right Approach

MYOB offers automatic bank feeds that connect directly to supported Australian and New Zealand financial institutions, pulling transactions into your MYOB file without any file handling on your part. When your bank is in MYOB's supported network and the feed is active, this is the preferred method for ongoing transaction import. It eliminates manual steps, reduces data entry errors, and keeps your books closer to real-time.

Manual bank statement import is the right approach when bank feeds cannot cover the job. The most common scenarios include:

Historical backfill. You need to import transaction history from before the bank feed was connected. Feeds are not retroactive, so any period before activation requires a file import.
Unsupported financial institutions. Your bank, credit union, or building society is not part of MYOB's bank feed network. Smaller regional institutions and some niche lenders often fall into this category.
Bank feed gaps. The feed was disconnected for a period, or transactions were missed due to a technical issue on either end. You need to patch the gap with a statement file.
Closing or switching bank accounts. You are importing final statements from an account that will not have an active feed going forward.
International accounts. Banks outside Australia and New Zealand may not support MYOB's feed integration, making file import the only option for foreign-currency accounts.

If your bank is supported for feeds, use them as your primary path for day-to-day transactions. Manual import is a targeted fallback for the situations above, not a replacement for an active feed. Treating it as a routine workflow when feeds are available creates unnecessary reconciliation work and increases the risk of missed or duplicated entries.

The same principle applies when automating supplier invoice processing in MYOB: native integrations handle the routine, manual processes fill the gaps.

How to Import a Bank Statement File into MYOB

Once you have a file in a supported format, the actual import process is straightforward. The steps differ slightly between MYOB Business (browser-based) and AccountRight (desktop), so we cover both below.

Before you start either workflow, check three things that cause most first-attempt failures:

File size must be under 10 MB (MYOB Business enforces this limit; oversized files are silently rejected or error out).
No transactions before your account's opening balance date. MYOB will skip any rows dated earlier than the opening balance you set when creating the bank account. If you need to import historical data, adjust the opening balance date first.
No transactions before the lock date. If your file contains dates that fall within a locked period, those transactions will not import. Unlock the period temporarily or trim the file to the correct date range.

Also confirm that your file's date range matches the period you actually want to import. Overlapping dates with transactions already in MYOB can create duplicates, which we address in the troubleshooting section later in this article.

MYOB Business (Browser-Based)

Go to Banking in the left-hand menu, then select Bank Statements.
Choose the bank account you want to import into from the account dropdown. This must match the account the statement belongs to.
Click Import Statement (top-right area of the bank statements screen).
Upload your QIF or OFX file. MYOB Business will parse the file and display the transactions it found.
Review the imported transactions. MYOB will attempt to suggest matches and allocations based on previous activity in the account. Check dates, amounts, and descriptions before accepting any automated matches.

That review step is where you catch problems. If the transaction count looks wrong or dates are off, the issue is almost always in the source file rather than the import tool itself.

MYOB AccountRight (Desktop)

Open the Import Bank Statement function from the Banking command centre.
Select the bank or credit card account the statement belongs to.
Browse for your file. AccountRight accepts OFX, QFX, QIF, and OFC formats, giving you slightly more flexibility than the browser version.
AccountRight will process the file and display matching results. The matching engine compares cheque number, date, and amount against existing transactions to identify potential duplicates and auto-match where it can.
Review the matches carefully. Confirm or override the suggested pairings before finalising the import.

The matching logic in AccountRight is more aggressive than in MYOB Business, which means it catches more genuine matches but occasionally pairs transactions incorrectly. Pay particular attention to same-day, same-amount entries from different payees.

If you also manage clients on other platforms, the workflow follows the same pattern but format requirements differ. Our guide on importing bank statements into FreshBooks covers the FreshBooks equivalent for bookkeepers handling bank reconciliation across multiple systems.

What to Do When Your Bank Statement Is a PDF or CSV

MYOB does not accept CSV, PDF, or Excel files for bank statement import. MYOB's own documentation suggests users should not need to convert bank statements, but that assumes your bank offers QIF or OFX downloads directly. Many do not, particularly smaller institutions and international banks.

You will hit this wall in a few common scenarios:

Your bank's online portal only exports PDFs or CSVs. This is typical of smaller banks, credit unions, and many international institutions, particularly those outside Australia's Big Four.
You are working with historical statements that predate electronic banking exports. These are often only available as scanned PDFs, sometimes from document archives or client handover folders.
Your bank offers CSV export but not QIF or OFX. The data is technically digital, but it is in the wrong container for MYOB.

In each case, the path forward is the same: a two-step conversion process. First, extract the transaction data into a structured format. Second, convert that structured data into QIF or OFX so MYOB can read it.

PDF bank statements are the harder problem. A PDF is not structured data. It is a visual layout of text, and the transaction rows you see on the page (date, description, amount, running balance) are not stored as discrete fields. Manually transcribing transactions from a PDF into a spreadsheet is tedious, error-prone, and impractical for anything beyond a handful of pages. According to a Sage survey of accountants and bookkeepers, manual data entry is a major pain point for 63% of professionals in the field, and PDF bank statement conversion is one of the most common triggers. A single miskeyed digit in an amount or date can cascade into reconciliation issues that take longer to fix than the original data entry.

Tools purpose-built for extracting data from financial documents handle this step far more reliably than manual transcription. Invoice Data Extraction, for example, lets you upload a PDF bank statement and prompt the AI on exactly which fields to pull. You receive a structured Excel or CSV spreadsheet containing the parsed transaction data, typically within minutes, even for lengthy multi-page statements. The platform supports both native and scanned PDFs, so older archived statements are not a barrier. From there, you use the structured output to create your QIF or OFX import file. For a detailed walkthrough of that format conversion step, see our guide on converting PDF bank statements to OFX, QFX, or QIF.

CSV bank statements are a simpler starting point, but they still require conversion work. The data is already structured into rows and columns, so extraction is not the issue. The challenge is field mapping. CSV column headers vary between banks: one bank labels the transaction date "Date," another uses "Transaction Date," and a third uses "Value Date." Amount columns might be split into separate debit and credit fields or combined into a single signed column. You need to understand which CSV column maps to which QIF or OFX field before you can produce a valid import file. Several free online converters can reformat a mapped CSV into QIF or OFX. If you prefer working in a spreadsheet, the QIF format is plain text with a straightforward field structure that you can build manually in Excel.

Whether you start from PDF or CSV, the goal is the same: produce a clean QIF or OFX file that MYOB will accept without errors. If your bank statements are PDFs and you need to extract data from bank statements automatically, that extraction step is where most of the time savings (or time loss) occurs. Getting the structured data right on the first pass avoids the back-and-forth of failed imports and manual corrections downstream.

Handling Duplicate Transactions and Other Import Issues

Even a technically successful import can create problems downstream if you are not aware of MYOB's specific behaviours around duplicate data, date restrictions, and partial imports. Most of these issues surface in MYOB community forums repeatedly, and they share a common thread: MYOB does not warn you about them in advance.

Duplicate Transactions from Overlapping Bank Feeds

The single most common import problem occurs when you import a statement file covering a date range where bank feed data already exists for the same account. MYOB does not automatically deduplicate between bank feed transactions and manually imported transactions. Both sets appear in your account, and you are left reconciling or deleting the extras manually.

The safest approach: only import statement files for periods where no bank feed data exists. Before importing, check the date range of your existing bank feed transactions in the account. If you need to backfill a gap (say, feeds started in March but you need January and February), import only the file covering that missing window. If your file spans into the feed-covered period, trim it to exclude those overlapping dates before import.

Partial Import and Resume Failures

If an import is interrupted partway through, or you only match some of the imported transactions before closing, re-importing the same file does not pick up where you left off. Transactions that were already matched during the first pass may not reappear for matching on a second attempt. The practical recommendation: review and match all imported transactions in a single session when possible. If you are importing a large file, set aside enough time to work through the full matching process before closing MYOB. For very large imports, consider splitting the file into smaller date-range batches so each one can be fully processed in one sitting.

Silently Excluded Transactions Due to Date Restrictions

Your import may report success, yet fewer transactions appear than the file contains. Before assuming file corruption, check two date-related restrictions that MYOB enforces silently:

Opening balance date. Any transaction with a date earlier than the account's opening balance date in MYOB is excluded from the import without notification. If you are backfilling historical data, you may need to adjust the account's opening balance date first.
Lock date. Transactions dated before your lock date are also excluded. If your organisation locks periods after BAS lodgement or month-end close, imported transactions falling within those locked periods will not come through.

If the import appears to succeed but the transaction count is lower than expected, these two date thresholds are the most likely cause.

Date Format Mismatches in QIF Files

QIF files encode dates in a format that varies by region. Australian files typically use DD/MM/YYYY, but files sourced from US-based tools or international banks may use MM/DD/YYYY. If transaction dates appear wrong after import (for example, 03/07/2025 interpreted as March 7 instead of 3 July), the source file's date format does not match MYOB's regional settings. Check your MYOB company file's regional configuration and, if necessary, reformat the dates in the QIF file before re-importing.

Once past these import hurdles, remember that imported transactions still need to be matched to accounts and formally reconciled before they flow into your reports and BAS calculations. The import gets data into MYOB; bank reconciliation is what makes it trustworthy.