Delete an imported bank statement in Xero, and import it again

Published 17 October 2026 · by Tekiba

A whole statement, or one line

Xero treats each import as a statement, and a statement can go as a unit: “You can delete an entire bank statement if you accidentally uploaded the wrong one or if there’s a duplicate statement.” That is the case here — a file that should not have gone in, or went in twice.

For one bad row in an otherwise good import, the same page points elsewhere: “If you don't want to delete the entire bank statement, you can delete a statement line instead.” A line is a different kind of delete. Xero's page on lines: “Deleted statement lines remain on the bank statement so they can be restored if required.” It also warns that “The Statement Balance of a bank account changes when you delete a bank statement line, so you should only delete a statement line if it’s a duplicate.” For a file imported twice, it sends you back to the statement: “If a whole bank statement has been imported twice in error, you can delete the entire bank statement.”

Not every user can do it. “You need the administrator or standard + bank accounts user role to delete a bank statement.”

The steps

1. Open the account's statements. “In the Accounting menu, select Bank accounts.” Find the account the file went into, open its menu, and choose Bank Statements.
2. List them by statement. “From Showing, select Statements.” Each import is listed by its dates.
3. Open the wrong one. “From the list of statements, click the date of the statement you want to delete.” Check its lines before going further: right dates, right account, the rows you expected.
4. Delete it. “Click Delete Entire Statement, found at the bottom of the list of statement lines.”
5. Decide about reconciled transactions. “(Optional) If you want to delete reconciled transactions, select Also delete reconciled transactions for this statement.” Then confirm.

Reconciled transactions: what goes with it

If you reconciled any of the statement's lines before noticing, those lines are matched to transactions in Xero. Deleting the statement offers to take them too: “You can also choose to delete any transactions the statement lines were reconciled against.”

Whether to tick that box depends on what those transactions are, and Xero's page leaves that to you. If any of them was in Xero before the import, such as a payment you matched a line to, check it before ticking. For a single line the behaviour is spelled out: “When you delete a bank statement line that’s reconciled to an account transaction, Xero deletes the bank statement line and reverts the account transaction back to unreconciled.”

The option is not always there. Xero's tip: “If you aren't given the option to delete reconciled transactions, you'll have to delete the account transactions separately.”

There is no undo

Xero's warning is plain: “Deleted bank statements can't be restored. If you delete a statement in error, you need to manually import it again.” So before you delete, make sure the file you will import instead is on your computer, and that it is right. A deleted statement that turns out to have been the good one has to come back from its file.

Before you import it again

A file that went in wrong once will go in wrong again. Find what was wrong first:

1. Money in showing as money out? Xero wants one signed amount column, income positive and expenses negative. Should debits be negative in a bank CSV? explains the conventions.
2. Dates a month out? Day and month were swapped, often by a spreadsheet as it opened the file. Why Excel changes the dates in your bank CSV shows how to stop it.
3. Dates refused? Xero does not take a year-first date written with hyphens, such as 2026-10-17; write 2026/10/17 instead.
4. Imported twice? Check whether a bank feed or an earlier import already covers the same dates before you import again.
5. Refused, or partly loaded? The ten import errors in QuickBooks and Xero lists each message and its fix.
6. Then check that the file adds up. Opening balance plus every amount should reach the closing balance on the statement. Reconcile a bank statement before you import it covers the checks.

Starting again from the PDF

If the CSV came from a PDF statement, convert the statement again rather than patching the old file by hand.

LedgerDrop's free CSV has five columns, Date, Description, Amount, Balance and Check#, with money in positive and dates as YYYY-MM-DD. For Xero, delete the Balance column, since Xero works out the balance from the transactions, and change the dates to YYYY/MM/DD, a form Xero lists. LedgerDrop Pro has a layout for Xero's bank statement import that writes year-first dates with slashes.

What this page cannot tell you

Everything here is from Xero's help pages, and nothing was tried in a Xero organisation. Xero changes its screens, and the menu names may move. Which reconciled transactions should be deleted depends on how each one was created, and on whether the period is closed; that is a question for whoever does your accounts.

Questions