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Guide · Export CSV · Bank of America

Export a Bank of America CSV — 18 months of activity, credit-card caveats included.

Bank of America's download flow has been steady for a few years — same path, same options, same quirks. If you bank with BofA and you're moving history into a new tool, expect to do this once per account: checking gets one file, each savings account gets its own file, each credit card gets its own file. Plan for an afternoon if you've got more than two or three accounts.

Step-by-step: export from Bank of America

  1. Sign in at bankofamerica.com on a desktop browser. The mobile app lets you view but not export.
  2. Click the account you want — checking, savings, or a BofA credit card.
  3. On the account activity page, look for the Download link, usually positioned above the transaction list near the date filters.
  4. Click Download. A dialog opens with format and date-range options.
  5. Under File type, choose Microsoft Excel format (.csv). The other options (Quicken .qfx, QuickBooks .qbo, Microsoft Money .ofx) won't import into Arden.
  6. Under Transaction period, pick a preset window or Custom date range with mm/dd/yyyy start and end. Hit Download Transactions.

What you'll get

  • Format: CSV with columns Date, Description, Amount, Running Bal. for checking/savings. Credit-card exports drop Running Bal. and instead surface Reference Number.
  • Date range — checking, savings, money market: up to 18 months of activity.
  • Date range — credit cards: 12 months only. Anything older lives in PDF statement archives.
  • Sign convention: Debits (money out) are negative on checking; payments are positive. Credit-card exports invert — purchases are negative, payments to the card are positive.
  • Statement transactions cap: for full bank statements, BofA caps the activity at 3,000 transactions per statement.

Importing into Arden

Drag the file onto /import. Arden auto-detects every column. The Running Bal.column is informational — Arden ignores it (balances are computed from your transactions, not stored). The sign convention reads cleanly without a flip for checking; if you're importing a credit card and the sign feels backwards, flip it once with the toggle and the live preview confirms.

Quirks specific to Bank of America

  • Credit cards are capped at 12 months, not 18. If you're trying to migrate two years of credit-card history, you'll need to grab PDF statements for the older period and convert them — or just import the last 12 months and accept the truncation.
  • The first row in the CSV is often an account-summary line, not the header. Arden's parser scans the first 15rows for the real column headers and ignores the summary preamble. If you're using another tool that fails, that's why.
  • Description fields are dense and concatenated. A single payee like "TRADER JOE'S" often appears as CHECKCARD 0312 TRADER JOE'S #182 LOS ANGEL CA 24445000.... Arden's payee normalization handles this, but raw-CSV viewers look messy.
  • Merchant Services accounts have their own export. If you run a small business with BofA Merchant Services, that data is at a different URL with a 13-month limit and a separate 2,500-transaction cap per export.

FAQ

  • Can I export multiple BofA accounts in one file?

    No. One file per account. Run the flow per checking account, per savings account, per card.

  • Does BofA export include pending transactions?

    No. Only posted transactions land in the CSV. Pending charges remain in the UI until they post.

  • What about my BofA mortgage or auto loan?

    Loan accounts don't have a transaction-level CSV export. You'll see payment history in the UI, but BofA only offers PDF statements for these. Track them as snapshot accounts in Arden — manual balance updates work fine.

Exporting from other banks?

Or just drop any CSV, XLSX, OFX, or QFX onto /import and Arden handles the rest.