Import a camt.053 statement

A camt.053 statement is the XML file Swiss banks provide under the ISO 20022 standard. It contains the account’s IBAN, the statement period, the opening and closing balances, and every booked transaction. ark.flow Compta reads the file as it is, without AI. AI only comes in afterwards, to suggest the accounts for each entry.

Before you start

• Download the statement in camt.053 (XML) format from your e-banking. The menu name varies from bank to bank: look for “camt.053”, “ISO 20022” or “XML statement”.
• The file must end in .xml and be no larger than 5 MB.
• To have your bank appear directly on the Import screen, open Chart of accounts, edit your bank account (class 1 or 2) and set its Bank import source. This step is optional.

Import the statement

1. Open Import.
2. Click your bank account in the list, or drop the file anywhere on the page.
3. Drop one or more statements. Each file gets a status: Pending, Analyzing, Ready, Duplicate or Error.
4. Click Continue with followed by the number of ready statements.

If you drop the same file twice in one batch, the copy is marked Duplicate and is not imported again.

What the import takes from the file

• Booked transactions only. Pending or purely informational entries are skipped.
• The detail of batch payments. A collective order, such as several salaries paid in a single debit, becomes one transaction per beneficiary.
• The booking date, or the value date if the bank provides nothing else.
• A readable description, built from the counterparty’s name and the payment reference.
• The bank account, recognised by the statement’s IBAN. If you picked the account yourself, its IBAN is saved for future imports.

The statement is also filed as a document of the bank account, so the source record is kept. If filing fails, a message tells you so. You can still import, but the entries will have no source document.

Check the balance

For each statement, the screen compares four amounts: the statement’s Opening and Closing balances, the account’s current balance in your books, and the balance After import.

• When the balance after import matches the statement’s closing balance, the screen shows Balance reconciled.
• Otherwise it shows the gap in CHF. The line-by-line reconciliation lists transactions found only at the bank or only in your books, swapped accounts and amount differences.

Approve the proposed entries

Each transaction gets a proposed entry: a debit account, a credit account and a confidence score. Proposals are sorted into groups:

Group	What it contains	What you do
Issues	Swapped accounts, amount differences	Fix them before importing
To review	Medium confidence	Read through and correct where needed
Ready	Confidence of 95% or more	Spot-check
Already in accounting	Transactions matching an existing entry	Nothing: they are not created again

You can change the accounts of any proposal before importing it. When the same supplier appears several times in a statement, ark.flow offers to apply the same accounts to the other transactions. Then click Import all or Import selected, and finally Finish batch.

Entries at 95% or above are saved as auto-validated; the others wait for your approval in Entries. A proposal is only a suggestion: check it before you close the period.

Common problems

“Fichier trop volumineux : 5 MB max pour un import camt.053” (this message is shown in French): the file is over 5 MB. Export a shorter period, for example one month.

An error containing “no booked transactions found”: the file contains no booked transactions. Check the period you chose in e-banking, and make sure it really is a camt.053 statement: debit and credit notifications (camt.054) and intraday reports (camt.052) are not read by this import.

“Unsupported file format”: the file must end in .xml. Don’t rename a PDF or CSV; choose the XML export in your e-banking instead.

The suggested account is wrong: pick the account from the list on the Import screen instead of dropping the file, and set its Bank import source in the chart of accounts.