If your business runs on an American Express card issued in France, learning to import AMEX Card France statement PDF to Xero turns a monthly PDF into reconciled books without an evening of manual typing. French Amex statements mix euro charges with foreign currency purchases, hotel and travel spending, and credits, and entering them by hand invites errors that only surface at year-end. A careful CSV import once a month gives you categorized expenses, a card balance you can trust, and a source document for every row.
This guide covers the French route end to end: downloading the right statement from your Amex France account, converting it to a Xero-ready CSV, mapping the fields correctly, handling French VAT the way it belongs in Xero, and reconciling the card account so nothing is double-counted. It also flags the France-specific traps, from euro formatting with commas as decimal separators to travel charges that need different VAT treatment from ordinary purchases.
Download the right AMEX Card France statement
Start in your American Express France online account and open the specific card you want to import. Download the official monthly statement as a PDF for the billing period you need. The statement is the document of record: it shows the opening balance, the closing balance, every charge and payment, interest, and fees. An activity view or a mobile summary may look similar, but it can omit adjustments that appear only on the statement, and it does not give you the closing balance you need for reconciliation.
Download each card separately if you hold more than one French Amex card, and keep one Xero credit card account per card. Employee supplementary cards usually appear on the same statement, so keep the full statement intact for conversion and sort out cardholder spending during the cleanup pass. Our AMEX Card France conversion guide explains the statement layout, including where converted foreign amounts appear.
Convert the PDF to a Xero-ready CSV
Upload the PDF to a statement converter and choose CSV output. Check the preview before downloading: every charge should be one row, payments should carry the opposite sign to charges, and the row count should roughly match the transactions printed on the statement. Repair any row split across a page break now, because a half-row in Xero becomes a mystery expense later.
French formatting needs a specific check. French statements and spreadsheets often use a comma as the decimal separator and a space as the thousands separator, while Xero expects a dot decimal in an imported CSV. Make sure amounts convert to the dot format before import, or Xero will read a 1.250 euro charge as something wildly different. Keep amounts in euros only, dropping any foreign currency column, and strip currency symbols so amounts import as numbers. Our Amex conversion guide walks through the same preview discipline for QuickBooks users.
Map the fields for a clean Xero import
In Xero, open the credit card account for this Amex card, choose to import a bank statement, and upload the CSV. Map Date to the transaction date, Description to the payee or description, and Amount to the amount, then study the preview. The first preview row should be a real charge, not a header, and the last row should be a real transaction, not a statement footer. French dates use day-month-year order, so confirm the date mapping matches that order before you confirm the import.
Confirm the account is set as a credit card account in EUR and that the statement period matches the file. Import one billing period at a time, oldest to newest, so the Xero running balance moves in the same order as the statement. When the import finishes, Xero places the rows in the reconciliation screen, ready for matching, coding, and bank rules. Recurring vendors such as fuel, software, and telecom are worth a bank rule on the first pass, because they turn next month into a short job.
Handle French VAT and travel spending
French VAT, or TVA, is the step that needs care. The standard rate applies to most domestic business purchases, but hotel stays, restaurant meals, transport, and certain services carry different rates or limited deductibility, and some charges, such as card fees and interest, carry no VAT at all. In Xero, assign the VAT rate that matches the actual purchase and its deductibility, not a single default rate for the whole statement. Coding a non-deductible meal as fully recoverable VAT overstates your claim, which is exactly the kind of error that draws attention during a tax review.
Travel spending deserves its own pass. Hotel bills often bundle room charges, breakfast, and taxes at different rates, so code the card charge against the itemized hotel invoice rather than guessing from the statement line alone. Separate personal spending on supplementary cards from business spending during this same pass, and keep the statement filed with the month as the source document for every row. Our Amegy Bank conversion guide explains the same habit of coding from the source invoice, not the statement line alone.
Reconcile in Xero and avoid double-counted spending
Reconciliation proves the import worked. In Xero, reconcile the credit card account against the statement, and the Xero balance after coding must equal the statement closing balance. Work through the imported rows methodically, matching charges to bills and receipts, coding the rest, and checking the payment from your bank account carefully. That payment is a transfer from your bank account to the card account, not a new expense: the purchases were the expenses, and recording the payment as spending double-counts the entire month.
The other classic error is importing the same period twice, once from a bank feed and once from a file. Pick one import path per card account and stick to it, and if you switch paths, start the new path from a clean period boundary with no overlap. A reconciled card account means your expense reports and tax filings rest on numbers you can defend, and it means next month starts from a balance you already trust.
Frequently asked questions
Can I import an AMEX Card France statement PDF directly into Xero?
Xero imports CSV files, not PDFs, so convert the statement PDF to a CSV first, then import that file into the credit card account for the card. The conversion preserves every transaction row and takes only a few minutes.
How do I handle French VAT on Amex charges?
Use the VAT rate that matches the actual purchase and its deductibility. Standard purchases, hotel stays, meals, and transport can differ, and card fees and interest generally carry no VAT and should be coded accordingly.
What about the comma decimal format on French statements?
Convert amounts to the dot decimal format before import. A comma decimal left in the CSV can make Xero misread amounts, so check the first few rows of the preview against the statement before confirming.
Should the card payment from my bank account be an expense?
No. Record it as a transfer to the card account. The purchases themselves were the expenses, and recording the payment as spending counts everything twice.
French card statements should reconcile themselves. Convert your AMEX Card France statement to a Xero-ready CSV and import the billing period in minutes, with VAT coded by purchase type from the start.