MT940 to Excel or CSV

Quick answer

MT940 is a compact SWIFT bank-statement format that machines read easily but people cannot. QuickBankConvert does not read raw MT940 files today — it accepts PDF and OFX statements. Almost every bank that delivers MT940 also offers the same statement as a PDF, so the practical route is to download that PDF and convert it into tidy date, description, and amount rows as Excel or CSV, usually in under a minute.

What is MT940?

MT940 (sometimes written "MT 940") is a SWIFT message type banks use to deliver an end-of-day customer statement. It was designed for system-to-system transfer between a bank and corporate treasury or ERP software, not for a human to read. The whole statement is a plain-text file — usually with a .sta, .940, or .txt extension — built from short, colon-delimited field tags.

A few of the tags that matter most:

• :20: — the transaction reference number for the statement.
• :25: — the account identification (your IBAN or account number).
• :28C: — the statement and sequence number.
• :60F: / :62F: — the opening and closing balance.
• :61: — the statement line: value date, booking date, debit/credit mark, amount, and a transaction type code, all packed into one dense line.
• :86: — the free-form narrative attached to the line above: counterparty name, payment reference, and remittance information, often split into numbered subfields.

A single transaction therefore spans a :61: line plus one or more :86: lines, with amounts stored as comma-decimal numbers (for example 1234,56) and dates as YYMMDD. It is precise and unambiguous for a computer — and almost unreadable at a glance.

Why MT940 is unreadable by humans

Open an MT940 file in a text editor and you will see something like :61:2506280628DR1234,56NTRFNONREF followed by a wall of :86: narrative. There are no column headers, no alignment, and no obvious separation between one transaction and the next. The debit/credit direction is a single D or C buried inside the line, decimals use commas, and the description can wrap across several tags.

That format breaks the moment you want to actually work with the data:

• You cannot sort, filter, or total a column that does not exist.
• Pasting it into Excel leaves everything in one column, with tags and values jumbled together.
• The comma decimals are misread as thousands separators, corrupting every amount.
• Multi-line :86: narratives land on the wrong rows.

What you actually want is one clean row per transaction, with the date, description, and amount in their own columns — which is exactly what the PDF version of the same statement converts into.

Who needs MT940 in Excel?

Plenty of finance roles receive MT940 from their bank and need it as a spreadsheet:

• Treasury teams consolidating balances and cash positions across multiple banks and accounts, where a quick pivot table beats a SWIFT parser.
• Accountants and bookkeepers doing bank reconciliation against ledger entries, matching each statement line to a booked transaction.
• ERP and accounting migrations — when moving between systems (or onboarding a new bank), teams often export historical MT940 and need readable rows to map, clean, and re-import.
• Auditors and analysts who receive a statement file and simply need to read what happened without installing treasury software.

In every case the goal is the same: turn the SWIFT payload into rows a person can read and a spreadsheet can sort.

How to get an MT940 statement into Excel

QuickBankConvert accepts PDF and OFX files, not raw .sta / .940 files, so start from the PDF (or OFX) version of the same statement:

1. Download the statement as a PDF. In your online or corporate banking portal, export the same account and period as a PDF statement (or OFX, if your bank offers it).
2. Upload it. Drag the file onto the converter. It is uploaded over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection and parsed on our servers.
3. Review the preview. Check the date, description, and amount columns against the statement's opening and closing balances.
4. Export. Download CSV or Excel (.xls) — both free with a free account — then open it in your spreadsheet, treasury, or accounting tool.

If your bank only provides MT940, your treasury or ERP system's own MT940 import is the right tool; tell us if native MT940 support would help you.

Which columns do you get?

Converting the PDF or OFX version of the statement gives you a consistent set of spreadsheet columns:

Use the statement's opening and closing balances as a sanity check that the rows add up.

Is it private?

Your statement is uploaded over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection and parsed on our servers, and a copy is stored — you can ask us to delete it at any time through the contact page. You never link a banking login or share credentials. Review the Privacy Policy for exactly what is stored and who processes it, or see the FAQ for more detail.

Free vs paid

• Previewing a statement is free with no account.
• CSV and Excel (.xls) export are free with a free account — 3 statements a month, up to 10 pages each.
• Plus ($29/mo), Pro ($59/mo), and Business ($99/mo) add more export formats — TSV, JSON, QBO, QIF, and Xero — and raise the limits.
• Page limits scale by plan: 10 pages on Free, 50 on Plus, and 100 on Pro and Business.
• Batch processing (Pro and Business) lets you drop in a folder of statements and export them together — handy for a year of monthly statements or several accounts at once.

See pricing for current details.

Related guides

• PDF bank statement to Excel
• PDF bank statement to CSV
• Browse all formats
• Browse all supported banks