How to Download Your Transaction History from a BMO Online Bank Account

Posted on by

If you like to keep an eye on your budget or if you just want a simple electronic record of your banking transactions for future reference, you may want to download your information and save it on a disk or stick. You’ll notice I don’t recommend you keep the data on your hard drive or handheld and I’ll mention why in this article. Here’s how you can download what’s been going in and out of your BMO online bank account.

Downloading Your BMO Bank Account Data to Use in a Spreadsheet or Financial Program

You can download your data directly in the format needed for

  • Quickbooks
  • Quicken, or
  • Simply Accounting

You can also download it in comma separated values format to use in most spreadsheets including Excel.

  1. Sign in to your BMO online banking account.
  2. Under the My Accounts section on the list of links on the left side of the screen, click on the bank account for which you wish to download the transactions.
  3. Under the name of the account, click on the link: Download Account Details

The Download Your Bank Account Details Page

  1. Confirm that the box is checked beside the account for which you wish to download the transactions. If not, click to select the box.
  2. In the Download: section, click to select the radio button beside
    * Activity since last download
    * Transactions in the following date range
  3. If you select the date range option, you must also enter the From: and To: dates.
    You can click on the Calendar icon to select the From: and To: dates, or you can type them in MM/DD/YYYY format.
  4. In the Format: section from the drop-down select the software in which you intend to use the information. Choices include:
    * Quickbooks
    * Quicken
    * Simply Accounting
    * Spreadsheet (CSV format)
  5. NOTE CSV format means “comma separated values.” Each column of information will be separated from the next by a comma. This is the format that can be opened by Microsoft Office Excel and many other spreadsheet programs.
  6. Click on the Continue button.
  7. If you chose to download for a spreadsheet, the Opening statement.csv popup window will open.

The Opening Statment.CSV Page

  1. Click to select the radio button beside
    • Open with Microsoft Office Excel
      (or choose another program from the drop-down list); or
    • Save File

    then click on the OK button.

  2. If selected, a spreadsheet will open with your transaction history. You may need to widen some columns to see the values properly formatted.
  3. The data reported includes:
    • Your debit card number
    • The Transaction type;For example: Credit or Debit
    • the date posted
    • the transaction amount
    • a description
  4. So for example, it will show that you used your debit card on a certain date to make a purchase at Victoria’s Secret.
  5. If you are finished with online banking, sign out of your account.
  6. For increased security, clear your browser cache and close your browser session.

You can sort your spending by description which may be useful if you use Debit to pay for certain purchases regularly such as groceries

Drawbacks of the Transaction History for a BMO Bank Account

Unfortunately, the history does not differentiate between various types of transactions. For example, a pre-authorized bill payment is reported as a DEBIT just like an in-store purchase.

Keep Your Financial Information Safe and Secure

You may want to keep your downloaded banking transaction history on a separate device rather than on the hard drive of your computer, laptop or handheld.

For sure, I would recommend deleting your bank card number from the file. Why make it easier for someone to know how to sign in to your account?

Related Reading

Join In
Have you found any quirks when downloading your BMO bank account history? Do you download it regularly or only when you’re hunting for some anomaly? Please share your views with a comment.

4 thoughts on “How to Download Your Transaction History from a BMO Online Bank Account”

  1. When downloading from BMO I noticed the date field
    downloads as 20150522 (in a number format instead of a date format. is there any way to download the date in csv in a date format instead of a number format?

    • Personally, I don’t see any way we can control that: CSV strips all of the formatting info and literally just gives the values separated by commas. If you were a programmer type, you could customize a macro to change it from number to date format after the download but I doubt that’s what you’re asking. Sorry that I can’t offer a useful solution.

      • Annoying I know. You can parse the date data using left return, mid, right return formula and create a separate column for year, month, day.
        My issue is that the software limits you to the last 3 months which doesn’t help if I want to do year over year spend comparisons.

        • Yes, there are a lot of things that are not great about trying to get information downloaded. Hope you were able to work around it.

Comments are closed.