How to Convert a Novo PDF Statement to CSV or Excel
Novo is unusual among business banks in one specific way, and it is the reason bookkeepers end up holding PDFs.
The constraint nobody writes about
Most guides to Novo cover the same ground: it is a business banking platform for small companies, it exports CSV, it syncs to QuickBooks and Xero. All true, and none of it explains why anyone would be converting a Novo PDF.
The reason sits in a help article about adding users, nowhere near the word "statement". In Novo's own words:
"Adding someone as an additional user gives them full access to your account, including the ability to move money." … "Partial or read-only access isn't available at this time."
There is no bookkeeper role, no read-only login, no accountant portal. The permission model has exactly two states: full control, or nothing.
Very few business owners will give an external bookkeeper the ability to move money, and no sensible bookkeeper wants that liability either. So the relationship falls back on the oldest workflow there is: the owner downloads statements and emails them over. Those arrive as PDFs, and the bookkeeper is where this page starts.
Quick answer: if you have account access, use Activity → Download CSV first. If you are the bookkeeper working from emailed statements, or you need a period the export will not reach, convert the PDFs instead.
What Novo actually gives you
Credit where it is due: Novo publishes its retention figures plainly, which most business banking platforms do not. Mercury, Brex, Relay and Bluevine all leave it unstated.
| Route | Format | How far back |
|---|---|---|
| Statements, web dashboard | Up to 24 months | |
| Statements, mobile app | Up to 48 months | |
| Activity export | CSV only | Date range; no published limit |
The split between web and app is worth knowing and easy to miss. If you are hunting for a statement from three years ago and cannot find it on the website, it is not gone. Open the app, where the window is twice as long.
One further limitation shapes the work: yearly, multi-month and partial-month statements are not available. A statement is one month. Rebuilding a tax year therefore means twelve downloads, which is precisely the situation where uploading all twelve at once and getting one continuous CSV back saves the afternoon.
Converting the statements (4 steps)
- Open Activity
In the Novo app or web dashboard, open the Activity view where transactions are listed. - Try the CSV export first
Select Download CSV and choose your date range. If it covers the period you need, you are done. - Otherwise download the statements
Open Statements and download the monthly PDF for each month you need. - Convert them
Go to reconcileiq.com/tool, upload the statements, check the totals against the statement, and download the CSV.
Where the CSV export runs out
Novo positions the CSV export as the answer to the statement limits, and for a lot of jobs it is. Go to Activity, hit Download CSV, pick a range. Novo does not publish a cap on that range.
It stops being the answer in three situations, all of them common:
- You are the bookkeeper, not the account holder. No read-only access means no Activity screen, so there is no export to run. You have what was emailed to you.
- The period predates the account or the integration. A live Xero feed starts the day it is connected. Everything before that has to come from somewhere else.
- Someone else has specified the document. A lender, an accountant preparing the return, or a due diligence request will ask for statements as issued, not a spreadsheet you exported. You end up holding the PDFs regardless.
What comes out
Novo does not publish the column structure of its statement PDFs, so this page will not pretend to describe it. What the converter returns is a consistent shape regardless: one normalized sortable date column, the description with any wrapped lines rejoined, one correctly signed amount column, and the running balance kept separate so it never gets summed as a transaction.
Page furniture goes: repeated headers, page numbers, the summary block at the top of the statement, and any section subtotals, which are the usual cause of a converted statement that will not reconcile.
Convert Your Novo Statement
Upload the PDF, check it against the statement's own opening and closing balance, download clean CSV. Your first statement of up to 10 pages converts free on a new account.
Convert your PDF now for freeFrequently Asked Questions
Novo publishes both numbers, which is more than most business banks do. Online you can access up to 24 months of statements; in the app you can access up to 48 months. Statements are available for any month back to your account creation date, within those windows. Yearly, multi-month and partial-month statements are not offered, so a full year means twelve separate downloads.
Yes, and it is the fastest route when it covers your period. Go to Activity, select Download CSV, and choose your date range. You can export all transactions or filter first. CSV is the only export format Novo offers: there is no XLSX, no OFX and no QBO.
Because Novo has no read-only access. In Novo's own words, adding someone as an additional user gives them full access to your account including the ability to move money, and partial or read-only access is not available. Most business owners will not grant money-movement rights to an external bookkeeper, so the practical workaround is emailing statements, which arrive as PDFs.
Both. The Xero connection sends transactions every hour. Novo also connects to QuickBooks Online. There is no NetSuite or Sage integration. A live feed covers ongoing bookkeeping well, but it does not help with a historical period that predates the connection, which is where statement conversion comes in.
Your first statement of up to 10 pages converts free on a new account. After that it runs on credits, with the cost shown before anything is processed. Files are uploaded and processed on our servers rather than in your browser, which is what allows scanned and photographed statements to work as well as native PDFs.