To delete an imported bank statement in Xero, go to Accounting, then Bank accounts, open the account's menu and choose Bank Statements. Show Statements, click the date of the import you want gone, then click Delete Entire Statement at the bottom of its lines. You can also remove reconciled transactions with it. Deleted statements cannot be restored.
Who can delete an imported bank statement in Xero?
Only some Xero users can delete an imported bank statement. Xero Central's article on deleting a bank statement says you need the administrator role, or the standard role with the bank accounts permission. If the delete button never appears for you, your user role is the likely reason, not the statement.
That permission rule catches people who were invited to help with the books on a limited role. A helper set up as a standard user without the bank accounts permission will not get the delete option, however long they look for it. Ask the subscriber or an adviser on the organisation to change your role, or ask them to do the delete.
It is worth knowing before you start whether you have the access, because the rest of the job depends on it. A user who can see the Bank Statements list but not the delete button can still do the useful groundwork: identify the bad import, note its dates and line count, and check which of its lines are reconciled. Hand that note to whoever has the role, and the delete itself takes them a minute.
Xero also lists two good reasons to delete a whole statement: you uploaded the wrong one, or the same statement went in twice. Both are import mistakes rather than bookkeeping mistakes. If the statement is right and only a line or two is off, a whole-statement delete is more than you need, and a later section of this post compares the two.
Finding the imported statement in the Bank Statements list
Xero keeps each manual import as its own statement in the bank account's Bank Statements list. From the Accounting menu, select Bank accounts, find the account, open its menu icon and select Bank Statements. Set Showing to Statements, and every file you imported appears with its date range.
That list is the bank account's import history. Each row is one upload, so if you imported January twice, you will see two rows covering the same dates. The dates help you pick the right one:
- A duplicate import shows two rows with the same start and end dates. Delete the later one, unless the earlier one is the one with problems.
- A wrong statement shows a row with dates or amounts you do not recognise for this account, often because a file meant for another account was picked.
- A partial overlap shows two rows whose dates share a few days. This is not a whole-statement problem. The overlap lines are duplicates, and finding and clearing duplicate statement lines in Xero is the better fix.
The same Bank Statements screen has a second view. Setting Showing to Statement lines lists every line from every import together. Use that view when you are hunting for single lines rather than whole files.
Steps to delete the entire imported bank statement
Deleting an entire imported bank statement takes about a minute once you have found it. Open the statement from the list, scroll to the bottom of its lines and use Delete Entire Statement. Xero asks whether to delete reconciled transactions too, then asks you to confirm.
The full steps from Xero Central:
- In the Accounting menu, select Bank accounts.
- Find the bank account the statement was imported into.
- Click the menu icon, then select Bank Statements.
- From Showing, select Statements.
- Click the date of the statement you want to delete.
- Click Delete Entire Statement, at the bottom of the list of statement lines.
- If you want the reconciled transactions gone as well, select Also delete reconciled transactions for this statement.
- Click Delete to confirm.
Before step 8, take a screenshot or note of the statement's date range and line count. Xero Central warns that deleted bank statements can't be restored, and that a statement deleted in error has to be imported again by hand. Your note tells you exactly which file to bring back if that happens.
An example of the decision
Say a small design studio imported its March checking statement on April 3, then imported the same file again on April 10 by mistake. The example Bank Statements list shows two rows, both March 1 to March 31, each with 48 lines. The first import is fully reconciled. The second is untouched. The fix is to open the April 10 row and delete it, leaving the box for reconciled transactions unticked because nothing on it was reconciled. Had the studio already reconciled some lines of the second copy, creating fresh spend money entries for them along the way, those entries would be duplicates too, and ticking the box would clear them in the same step.
What happens to reconciled lines when the statement goes?
Reconciled lines are statement lines you have already paired with an account transaction, such as a spend money entry or an invoice payment. When you delete the statement, the lines go. Their paired transactions stay unless you tick the option to delete reconciled transactions as well, which removes the account transactions those lines were reconciled to.
Choose carefully, because the two cases want opposite answers:
- Leave the box unticked when the transactions are real and you plan to import a corrected statement. They become unreconciled, and the new statement's lines can be matched to them.
- Tick the box when the transactions were created only because of the bad import, for example spend money entries you made while reconciling a statement that belonged to another account.
Xero Central adds a tip: if Xero does not offer the option to delete reconciled transactions, you have to delete those account transactions separately. That usually means opening each one from the bank account's Account Transactions view and removing it there.
Deleting a statement also changes the account's Statement Balance, the running balance Xero builds from imported lines. That figure should match the balance on your real bank statement after you re-import the right file. If it does not, fixing a Xero statement balance that is wrong after an import walks through the usual causes.
Whole statement or single statement lines: which Xero delete fits?
A whole-statement delete removes every line of one import for good. A statement line delete removes chosen lines but keeps them on the statement so they can be restored. Delete the whole statement when the file itself was wrong or doubled. Delete lines when the file was right except for a few duplicates.
Xero Central's article on deleting or restoring a bank statement line explains the line route. You cannot permanently delete a statement line. Deleted lines stay on the statement and can be restored. When you delete a line that is reconciled, Xero deletes the line and sets the paired account transaction back to unreconciled.
| Delete entire statement | Delete statement lines | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Every line from one import | Only the lines you tick |
| Can you undo it? | No, you must import again | Yes, the lines can be restored |
| Reconciled transactions | Kept, or deleted if you tick the option | Set back to unreconciled |
| Best for | The wrong file, or a full duplicate | A few doubled lines inside a good file |
| Who can do it | Administrator, or standard with bank accounts | Administrator, or standard with bank accounts |
The line article also warns against deleting a statement line for any reason other than a duplicate. A line reconciled to the wrong transaction should be unreconciled instead, and a personal expense can be coded to a drawings account. If you delete lines and later need them, restoring deleted statement lines in Xero covers the Restore button and where deleted lines hide.
Importing the corrected bank statement file into Xero
Once the bad import is gone, bring in the right file through the same bank account's import option. Xero accepts OFX, QFX, QuickBooks, QIF, PDF and CSV formats, and it recommends OFX where possible because the bank's export usually needs no changes. Check the file's dates first, so you do not recreate the overlap you just removed.
Xero Central's overview of manually importing bank transactions lists those formats and adds that you can build your own CSV in a spreadsheet when the bank offers none of them. A short checklist for the re-import:
- The file is for this bank account, with the right last four digits on the source statement.
- Its first and last dates fill the gap you created, and no more.
- The line count matches the statement you deleted, or differs only by the duplicates you meant to drop.
- After import, the Statement Balance agrees with the closing balance on the paper or PDF statement.
Many people switching to Xero arrive with PDF statements rather than bank exports, often because they are leaving a desktop package. If that is your path, the QuickBooks Desktop sunset and what it means for bank imports explains the background. For the file itself, SimpleBankConvert is being built to turn a PDF statement into a CSV laid out the way Xero's statement import expects, with payee and reference in their own columns. Get started to hear when accounts open.