How to Check a Bank Statement for Fraud and Errors

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) advises checking your credit card statement when you get it, so you can catch mistakes and unauthorized charges early.

Reviewing is also where deadlines can start. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) explains that, for a withdrawal you did not authorize, how quickly you tell your bank matters. The rules below are summarised from CFPB and FTC pages and are not a substitute for reading them.

CFPB's page on getting your money back after an unauthorized transaction says that if your bank sends a statement showing an unauthorized withdrawal, you should notify them within 60 days. If the withdrawal was not caused by you and your card, code and PIN were not lost or stolen, it says to notify your bank or credit union right away. If you miss the 60-day deadline, the bank may hold you responsible for later transactions only if it can show that timely notice would have prevented them.

For a lost or stolen debit card, CFPB says that reporting within two business days means the bank cannot hold you responsible for more than the amount of any unauthorized transactions or $50, whichever is less. Reporting after that window, it says, could make you responsible for up to $500 in unauthorized transactions.

CFPB's Regulation E page (section 1005.6) states the 60-day rule as notice within 60 days of the financial institution's transmittal of the statement, to avoid liability for transfers made after that period and before you give notice.

CFPB also describes investigation timelines. The bank generally has ten business days to investigate (20 if the account is under 30 days old), generally must issue a temporary credit if it needs more time, and must resolve the issue within 45 days, which can stretch to 90 days for foreign, new-account or debit card point-of-sale transactions.

The FTC page on using credit cards and disputing charges says federal law limits your responsibility for unauthorized charges to $50. For a billing error, it says to send your dispute letter so that it reaches the issuer within 60 days after the first bill with the error was sent to you. It describes the Fair Credit Billing Act as setting out a dispute process, advises sending the written dispute to the issuer's billing-inquiries address rather than the payment address, and says to include copies of supporting documents.

It also says unauthorized charges can point to identity theft, and directs people to IdentityTheft.gov if they suspect it.

A statement PDF is hard to scan for patterns. Once the transactions are rows in a spreadsheet, you can sort and filter them in ways a PDF does not allow. This only helps you look, and it does not detect fraud automatically. A made-up example:

• Sort by Description to group repeat merchants and spot a name you do not recognise.

• Sort by Amount to bring unusually large or very small test-size charges to the top.

• Add a Reviewed column and mark each row Yes, No or Query. Anything marked Query gets checked against your receipts or online banking.

• Use a COUNTIF-style check to flag the same amount on the same date twice, then check the statement, since two identical genuine purchases do happen.

• Compare opening balance plus deposits minus withdrawals with the printed closing balance, to confirm that the spreadsheet matches the statement before you rely on it.

Do not decide from the spreadsheet alone. Check whether it could be a subscription, a pending authorisation that posted under another name, or a family member's purchase. If it is still unexplained, contact your bank or card issuer using the number on your card or official website, and keep a note of the date and the statement it appeared on, since the pages above measure deadlines from the statement date.

Keep the original statement PDF with your notes, and the spreadsheet as a working copy. PDFtoRow can convert statement PDFs to Excel or CSV for this kind of review.