“The export covers the wrong dates”
You request January and receive December, or a range that stops short at both ends. The bank is usually applying a different definition of the period than the one you had in mind, and knowing which turns a repeated annoyance into a one-time adjustment.
Symptoms
The file starts or ends days away from the range you selected A statement download gives the billing cycle rather than the calendar month Reimporting the same range produces a different set of transactions
What actually causes it
Statement cycle versus calendar month
Credit cards export by billing cycle, which typically starts mid-month. Downloading "the January statement" gets you roughly 20 December to 19 January, and reconciling that against a calendar month will never balance.
The range is interpreted as posted dates
A card payment authorised on the 31st may post on the 2nd. Ranges filter on the posting date, so transactions you remember making inside the period sit outside the export.
Retention limits truncate the range
Many banks keep only 90 days or 18 months of downloadable history. Requesting more returns what exists without warning that the rest was silently dropped.
How to fix it
- Drop the file into the fixer below to see how many transactions it actually holds — that is the fastest way to spot a range that came back short.
- Match your reconciliation to the statement cycle rather than the calendar month for credit cards.
- Request ranges by transaction date where the bank offers the choice, and add a few days at each end to catch posting delays.
- For older history, export in smaller chunks; a request beyond the retention window returns partial data rather than an error.
Related import problems
Skip the manual edit — fix it automatically
Seeing the transaction count and structure confirms whether a short file is a truncated download or simply a short period. Free, no signup, no upload.
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