Manual Bank Statement Downloads: The Hidden Time Sink for Tax Accountants

Manual bank statement downloads drain hours from tax and bookkeeping practices every month. The process sounds simple: log into a client’s bank, download their statements, get the check images. But the reality involves navigating different portals for each bank, clicking through multiple screens per statement, and discovering that check images often require separate downloads from a completely different section of the banking portal.

Financial teams spend 30% of their operations time re-keying statement data according to a 2024 Deloitte banking operations report¹. For accounting firms managing dozens or hundreds of clients across multiple banks, statement collection alone can consume entire workdays.

Table of Contents

• The Wells Fargo check image problem
• Why check images matter for tax and bookkeeping work
• The multi-bank portal reality
• Time costs add up fast
• The data cleanup burden after download
• Staff burnout from repetitive downloads
• What automated alternatives look like
• Next steps for overwhelmed practices

The Wells Fargo check image problem

Wells Fargo provides a clear example of how bank portals create extra work for accountants. When you download a Wells Fargo statement PDF, check images are not automatically included². The statement shows transaction details and check numbers, but getting the actual images of those checks requires a completely separate process.

To access check images at Wells Fargo, you must:

1. Sign into Wells Fargo Online
2. Navigate to Account Activity (not Statements)
3. Click the check icon next to each individual check
4. Save each image separately using right-click > “Save Picture As”
5. Repeat for every check you need

This means downloading a 12-month period of bank activity for a client who writes 50 checks per month requires 600 individual clicks just for the check images. One Stack Exchange user described the experience: “During my divorce, I had to manually download two year’s worth of statements for a half-dozen accounts. It was definitely onerous drudge work made even worse by having to remember to name them all correctly.”³

Wells Fargo’s FAQ confirms that check images are available for viewing through Account Activity for the past 18 months². Customers who want check images included with their statements must contact Wells Fargo directly, and “additional fees may apply.”

For accountants handling write-up work, this creates a painful choice: spend hours downloading images one-by-one, ask clients to do it themselves (which rarely happens), or work without the check images and risk missing categorization details.

Why check images matter for tax and bookkeeping work

Check images contain information that transaction descriptions alone cannot provide. A bank statement might show “Check #1234 - $500” but the check image reveals the payee name, memo line notes, and sometimes expense details written by the client.

This matters most for:

Write-up and bookkeeping services. When coding transactions to the chart of accounts, the payee name determines whether a $500 check goes to Office Supplies, Professional Services, or Owner Draw. Without the image, accountants must guess or ask clients to research each transaction.

Tax preparation. Certain deductions require documentation. A check image showing payment to “ABC Child Care” supports a dependent care credit claim. A check to “Dr. Smith, DDS” supports medical expense deductions.

Audit support. If a client gets audited, having check images readily available can resolve questions quickly instead of requiring 10-day waits for paper copies from the bank².

The irony: banks capture these images for their own fraud detection and recordkeeping. They simply make it difficult for customers (and their accountants) to access them at scale.

The multi-bank portal reality

Most accounting firms don’t deal with just one bank. A small practice with 50 clients might encounter 15-20 different financial institutions, each with its own portal design, login process, and download workflow.

Each bank handles statement access differently:

• Statement retention periods vary. Wells Fargo keeps deposit account statements for 7 years². Other banks offer as little as 12-18 months. Credit card statements might have different retention than checking accounts at the same bank.

• Download formats differ. Some banks provide clean PDFs. Others generate image-based scans. CSV export options exist at some institutions but not others.

• Check image access is inconsistent. Some banks embed check images in statements. Others require separate navigation. A few offer bulk download tools. Most require one-at-a-time clicks.

• Security measures add friction. Two-factor authentication, security questions, timeout sessions, and device verification all add legitimate security but also add time to each portal visit.

When clients don’t provide bank access credentials, accountants must request statements and wait for clients to download and send them. Research shows that chasing clients for documents wastes substantial firm time, with 79% of surveyed tax professionals reporting client responsiveness as a top challenge⁴.

Time costs add up fast

The math reveals why manual downloads drain so much capacity. Consider a single client with one checking account:

Monthly statement download: 2-3 minutes (login, navigate, download, logout)

Check image downloads for 20 checks: 30-40 minutes (navigate to each check, right-click save, name file appropriately)

Data cleanup and formatting: 15-30 minutes (organize files, convert formats if needed, verify completeness)

Total time per client per month: 45-75 minutes for a straightforward case

Multiply by 50 clients and you have 37-62 hours of staff time monthly just on bank data collection. That doesn’t include credit cards, investment accounts, or the inevitable re-downloads when files corrupt or clients provide incomplete date ranges.

Processing bank statements remains a tedious and often inefficient task for accounting firms. When files aren’t downloaded correctly, columns are in the wrong order, or dates need reformatting, a single account might take 30 to 45 minutes⁵. Multiply that across a client base and the hours become staggering.

The data cleanup burden after download

Getting the files is only the first challenge. Once downloaded, bank statement PDFs rarely import cleanly into accounting software.

Research found that 84% of firms using desktop OCR identify data cleansing as their biggest challenge⁵. Common problems include:

• Combined date and description fields that need manual separation
• Multi-line transaction descriptions that break formatting
• Misread figures requiring correction
• Debit and credit columns mapped incorrectly
• Irrelevant information (advertising, legal notices) mixed with transaction data

Every bank uses a unique layout. The template that works for Chase statements won’t parse Bank of America correctly. Building and maintaining templates for each bank format consumes setup time that smaller firms often cannot justify.

Human data entry carries a 4% error rate on average⁵. Those errors compound downstream: a miscoded transaction affects account balances, financial reports, and potentially tax filings. Finding and fixing errors after the fact takes 3x longer than correct initial entry⁶.

Staff burnout from repetitive downloads

Repetitive bank portal work takes a toll beyond just time. A survey by the AICPA found that 99% of accountants experience burnout⁷. While many factors contribute, repetitive manual tasks rank high among causes.

Staff spend hours on mindless data collection rather than analysis, advisory, or client relationship work. During tax season, when partners may work 85-100 hours per week⁷, assigning skilled staff to portal clicking wastes expensive labor.

The accounting profession has seen more than 300,000 U.S. accountants and auditors leave their jobs over two years, a 17% decline⁸. When asked about contributing factors, 47% of surveyed CFOs pointed to employee burnout from long hours and menial tasks⁸.

Repetitive aspects of accounting work, including data entry and document collection, become mentally exhausting over time⁷. Staff who joined the profession to solve financial problems and advise clients find themselves instead navigating bank portals and renaming downloaded files.

What automated alternatives look like

Banks report 70-80% cost savings after moving from manual processes to automated data capture⁵. The technology exists to reduce bank statement collection from hours to minutes.

Bank feed connections link accounting software directly to client bank accounts. Transactions flow automatically without manual downloads. Setup requires initial client authorization, but ongoing maintenance is minimal.

Automated statement fetching pulls PDFs from bank portals on a schedule. Services like LedgerDocs and Dext offer this capability, eliminating the manual login-navigate-download cycle⁹.

AI-powered OCR processes downloaded statements and extracts structured data regardless of bank format. Modern systems adapt to new layouts without manual template creation¹.

The barriers to adoption come down to client cooperation (providing credentials or authorization), security concerns (who has access to what), and setup difficulty (making systems talk to each other).

For firms still running manual processes, even partial automation yields real time savings. Automating statement downloads while keeping manual check image review, for example, captures most of the time savings while maintaining human oversight on the detail-intensive work.

Next steps for overwhelmed practices

If manual bank downloads consume disproportionate staff time, consider these approaches:

Audit your current process. Track how many hours per week staff spend on bank portal work across all clients. The number is likely higher than intuition suggests.

Standardize where possible. Create written procedures for each major bank’s portal. Staff shouldn’t rediscover the Wells Fargo check image workaround every time.

Explore bank feed options. Many practice management platforms now include direct bank connections. The setup investment often pays back within weeks.

Evaluate outsourced solutions. Some firms handle statement collection in-house while outsourcing data entry. Others outsource the entire bank data workflow.

Set client expectations early. New client onboarding should include clear discussion of bank access. Getting credentials upfront prevents months of back-and-forth requests.

The accounting profession cannot escape bank data. Every client needs statements processed, transactions categorized, and records maintained. The question is whether your firm spends its capacity clicking through portals or applying professional judgment to the data that matters.

Manual downloads represent solvable friction. Wells Fargo’s separation of check images from statements creates extra steps, but the underlying problem affects every bank to varying degrees. Firms that systematically address bank data collection free capacity for work that actually requires accounting expertise.