To get a prepaid card statement to Excel, start with the card's online transaction history, because many prepaid cards never mail a monthly statement. Copy or export the history into a sheet, keep each fee as its own row, and request a written history if you need older months. Paying to convert is rarely needed.
Does a prepaid card send a statement at all?
Many prepaid cards do not send a monthly statement, and in the US that is allowed. Under Regulation E, a prepaid account provider can skip periodic statements if it offers a balance by phone, an online history and a written history on request. So the absence of a PDF is normal, not a missing document.
The rule is in the CFPB's text of Regulation E section 1005.18 on prepaid accounts. It sets out the alternative to statements: a readily available telephone line for the balance, an electronic history covering at least 12 months before the date you look, and a written history covering at least 24 months, provided promptly when you ask.
That shapes the job. Instead of converting a stack of statements, you are usually copying an online list, and the written history is your route to anything older than a year.
Where a prepaid card's transaction history lives
A prepaid card's transaction history lives in the card's website or app, usually under a heading such as activity, transactions or history. The online view should reach back at least 12 months. Older activity comes from a written history, which you request from the card provider by phone or through its support pages.
Check the history page for a download button before copying anything. Some providers offer a CSV or spreadsheet export, which gives you rows in one step. Others only show a list on screen, and a few offer a printable or PDF version of the history.
If you request a written history, ask for it as a PDF rather than on paper. A text-based PDF can be copied or converted. Paper has to be typed or scanned.
Prepaid card fees that deserve their own rows
Prepaid card fees should each sit on their own row, because they are the costs you can most often avoid next month. Fees are easy to lose when you only track spending. A sheet that lists them separately shows exactly what the card costs to hold and use.
Fee types to look for in the history, as a checklist:
- Monthly or maintenance fee
- ATM withdrawal fee, plus any fee from the ATM owner
- Reload or cash deposit fee at a retailer
- Balance inquiry fee, by phone or at an ATM
- Inactivity fee after a period of no use
- Foreign transaction fee on purchases in another currency
- Card replacement fee
Add a column called type, and mark each row as purchase, load, withdrawal or fee. A filter on that column then totals the fees for the month in one step. A card used abroad adds currency lines too, and the guide to multi currency statements in Excel covers how to keep amounts in different currencies apart.
Getting prepaid card rows into Excel for free
The free route has four steps, and most cards need only the first two. It works for any card whose history shows on screen, and it costs nothing but a few minutes.
- Look for an export. On the history page, check for download, export or CSV. If it exists, open the file in Excel and skip to step 4.
- Copy the on-screen list. Select the history table in your browser, copy it and paste it into Excel. Use Paste Special as text if the layout comes out messy.
- Fix dates and amounts. Make sure dates are real dates and amounts are numbers. Loads should be positive and spending negative, or the other way round, but consistent.
- Check the balance. Your starting balance plus loads minus spending and fees should equal the balance the card shows today.
If the step 4 check fails, look for a pending transaction that has not posted yet. It often explains a small gap.
Is a prepaid card statement worth paying to convert?
A prepaid card statement is worth paying to convert only when the history exists as a long PDF and nothing else, such as a written history covering 24 months. Even then, check the page count first: a PDF of 2 pages or fewer converts free in full with CheapBankConvert, and its early price is $2.99 up to 10 pages.
Its homepage describes the tool for text-based PDF statements from checking, savings and credit card accounts. A prepaid card history is close in shape, but it is not on that list, so use the free preview of the first 2 pages to see whether the rows come out right before you pay. A history longer than 40 pages sits above the listed tiers, and splitting a long PDF to fit a converter's page limits shows how to cut it into parts.
Check the final price at checkout too, since tax can apply on top of a listed price. Why a PDF converter's total can include sales tax explains when that happens.
Prepaid card edge case: a replaced or reloaded card
A replaced prepaid card can split its history in two, with the old card's activity under one number and the new card's under another. A lost card, an expired card or an upgrade to a different product can all cause this. Ask the provider whether the history moved to the new card or stayed with the old account.
If the history is split, export or copy each part separately, add a column for the card's last four digits, and stack the two lists in one sheet. The closing balance of the old card should equal the first balance transferred onto the new one.
The same column trick works for a company that hands out several cards, one per employee. For that case, converting a business credit card statement by cardholder shows how to give each card its own sheet. When your rows come from a bank statement PDF instead, CheapBankConvert's homepage has the early one-time prices.