Learning to import Banco de Credito del Peru statement into Xero saves freelancers and small businesses in Peru a long evening of manual entry every month. Banco de Credito del Peru, known widely as BCP, is one of the largest banks in the country, and its statements download as PDFs that look tidy on screen but cannot be imported into Xero directly. Convert the PDF to a clean CSV, import that file, and your soles transactions land in Xero ready to match and reconcile.
Peruvian statements bring their own formatting habits: day-first dates, amounts in soles with comma decimals, and Spanish labels throughout. The conversion step is where those habits either survive intact or cause trouble, so this guide spends most of its time there. Get the CSV right and the Xero import is a five-minute job. Get it wrong and reconciliation turns into detective work. The steps below cover downloading, converting, importing, and checking the result.
Download the estado de cuenta from BCP online banking
Log in to BCP online banking and open the account you want to reconcile. Find the statements section, choose the account and the month, and download the estado de cuenta as a PDF. Avoid printing the on-screen activity list: the list view often hides fees, truncates long descriptions, and may omit the opening and closing balances that make reconciliation possible. The PDF is the complete record.
Check the PDF before converting. Confirm the opening balance matches the previous month's closing balance, and confirm the last page shows the closing balance for the period. Spanish labels to look for include saldo anterior for the opening balance and saldo final for the closing balance. If you hold both a soles account and a US dollar account with BCP, download them separately and keep the files apart. A soles statement imported into a dollar Xero account, or the reverse, creates conversion noise on every row. For background on the bank, see our Banco de Credito del Peru bank page.
Convert the PDF to a Xero-ready CSV
Upload the PDF to a converter and inspect the output before importing anything. A Xero-ready CSV needs Date, Description, and Amount columns, with a consistent sign rule: money out as negative and money in as positive, or separate Withdrawal and Deposit columns. Pick one rule, apply it to the whole file, and tell Xero which rule you used when you map the columns.
Two Peruvian formatting details deserve a check. First, dates are day-first, so 07/03/2026 is March 7, not July 3. If your spreadsheet or converter reorders them, fix the column to an unambiguous YYYY-MM-DD format before import. Second, sol amounts use a comma for decimals, so S/ 1,250.50 in US notation may appear as 1.250,50 in the statement. Verify five amounts against the PDF by hand. If the CSV amounts are one hundred times too small, the comma was misread as a thousands separator, and the number format needs fixing in the spreadsheet. For the general method, see our guide on how to convert a bank statement PDF to Excel.
Import the CSV into Xero
In Xero, go to Accounting, then Bank Accounts, and open the account that matches the statement. Set the account currency to Peruvian soles (PEN) for a soles statement, or US dollars for a dollar statement, before importing. From the account menu, choose Import a Bank Statement and upload the CSV. Map the date, description, and amount columns, then study the preview screen. Xero shows the first rows before committing the import, and this preview is the cheapest place to catch a flipped sign or a swapped date.
If the preview looks wrong, cancel and fix the CSV rather than importing and cleaning up later. Common preview problems include descriptions cut off mid-word, which makes matching harder, and rows in the wrong order, which makes the running balance hard to follow. Sort the CSV by date before import, and keep descriptions as complete as the PDF allows. Once the preview matches the PDF, confirm the import.
Reconcile and handle dual-currency accounts
Open the reconciliation screen for the account and match imported transactions against invoices, bills, and expenses already in Xero. Work through unmatched items one by one: a mismatch usually comes from a payee name that differs from the invoice, a date shifted by a format error, or a duplicate row from overlapping statement periods. Fix the cause, not just the symptom, so next month imports cleanly.
Dual-currency businesses need one extra habit. Keep soles and dollar accounts strictly separate in Xero, and record transfers between them as transfers, not as income or expenses. If a soles payment settles a dollar invoice, record the exchange difference explicitly so the invoice closes at the right value. Then compare the reconciled balance to the PDF closing balance. When they agree, the month is done, and the routine gets faster every month. For more on the matching process, see our guide on how to reconcile a bank statement.
Frequently asked questions
Can I import a BCP statement PDF straight into Xero?
No. Xero does not import PDFs. Convert the PDF to CSV first, then import the CSV through the bank account menu.
What if my BCP account is in US dollars?
Create or use a US dollar bank account in Xero and import the dollar statement there. Never mix soles and dollar statements in one Xero account.
Why are my amounts wrong after conversion?
Usually the comma decimal was misread. Check the CSV amounts against the PDF and fix the number format in a spreadsheet before importing.
How do I avoid importing the same month twice?
Keep a simple log of imported periods, one row per account per month, and check it before each import. Overlapping date ranges are the main source of duplicates.
Do one month carefully and the rest follow the same pattern. If you convert statements regularly, check pricing for volume plans, and start from the ConvertStatement home page.