Bank statements for forensic accounting and divorce cases
Asset tracing, lifestyle analysis and financial disclosure all start the same way: years of bank statements, often a mix of downloads and scans, that have to become one spreadsheet. In this work the spreadsheet is only useful if every figure in it can be traced back to the page it came from – and if you can show that no statement is missing from the record.
What the working spreadsheet needs
- A source for every transaction – which file, which page, which line – so any figure can be checked against the original in seconds.
- Proof that each statement was read completely – opening balance plus transactions equals the closing balance, and every running balance printed on the statement matches.
- Continuity across statements – each closing balance equals the next opening balance, so a gap in the record is found before someone else finds it.
- A visible trail of corrections – if a figure was changed by hand, the spreadsheet says so.
- Accounts kept apart – statements for different accounts are not mixed together.
How BalancedProof handles it
Drop the statements on the converter – PDFs, scans and phone photos together. Each statement is read and reconciled against its printed balances; statements are grouped by the account number printed on them and put in date order. The Excel workbook you download for the batch gives you:
| Column / sheet | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Source file, Page, Row on page | Where each transaction is on the original statement. |
| Statement balance, Calculated balance | The running balance printed on the statement next to the one calculated from the transactions – they agree on every line that reconciles. |
| Check | OK, or the reason a row needs attention; rows corrected by hand are marked "edited by reviewer". |
| Transaction ID | An ID for each transaction that stays the same when you export the same statements again, so a row can be referred to in notes. |
| Statements sheet | One line per statement: file, account, period, opening balance, money in and out, calculated and printed closing balance, the difference, and whether it reconciled. |
| Continuity sheet | Every pair of consecutive statements: connected, balances that don't connect (with the difference), a likely missing statement (with the dates of the gap), overlapping periods, and files uploaded twice. |
While reviewing, click any row to see that exact line cut from the original page next to what was read. Dates that could be day-first or month-first are flagged rather than guessed silently.
What it doesn't do
- It converts and checks statements; it doesn't categorise transactions or carry out the analysis itself.
- The spreadsheet is a working document for your own review. Check it against the original statements before you rely on it, and keep the originals – we don't.
- The row-by-row check needs statements that print a running balance. Statements without one are checked on their opening and closing balances only.
- Up to 30 statements can be processing at once from one network – several years go in a few batches.
Your clients' data
Files are deleted 2 hours after your last activity (24 hours at most), or straight away when you click delete. There is no account, and we don't keep copies. To learn a statement layout we haven't seen before, we send an anonymised outline of the page to an AI service – letters replaced by "x" and digits by "9", so no names, account numbers or amounts. Where the service is hosted and who processes what is set out in our privacy policy.
Cost
The first 5 pages a day are free, without signing up. For a case file, page packs are one-time payments – 1,000 pages for $29 or 5,000 pages for $99, valid for 12 months.