“The HSBC export is not accepted”
HSBC exports tend to carry account details above the transaction table, and that preamble is what most importers trip over. The file is complete; the reader simply never finds the header row it needs.
Symptoms
The import preview is empty or shows only nonsense rows Column mapping offers fields that look like your account number Dates import a month out
What actually causes it
Account details above the header row
Exports frequently begin with account name, sort code, number and the date range before the real column names. Importers read the first line as the header, find nothing recognisable, and treat the actual header as ordinary data.
Day-first date order
UK dates are day-first, and software defaulting to your computer's locale reads them month-first. The result is silent for the first twelve days of each month and rejected afterwards.
Separate paid-in and paid-out columns
Two columns rather than one signed amount means the mapping must assign both. Assigning only one makes every transaction of the other kind arrive as zero or with the wrong sign.
How to fix it
- Drop the file into the checker below — it reports the delimiter, real column count and rows that do not line up with the header.
- Delete every line above the header so the column names are the first row of the file.
- Map paid-in and paid-out deliberately, and set the date format to day-first.
- Re-check the edited file; spreadsheet edits often introduce the encoding and delimiter problems the checker also catches.
Related import problems
Skip the manual edit — fix it automatically
The checker tells you which line the real data starts on, which is exactly what a preamble hides from the import preview. Free, no signup, no upload.
Open the fixer