How bookkeepers request a credit card statement from clients
By Arthur Teboul, DokuTrak · Published
In short
Ask for the monthly statement of every card that paid for business expenses: business cards, each employee card on the account, and any personal card the owner used for the business. Ask for the PDF from the card issuer’s website, all pages. You reconcile each card account to the statement balance, so the statement period, not the calendar month, sets what you match.
Why bookkeepers need a credit card statement
Card feeds break as often as bank feeds, and they miss things a bank feed does not have: refunds posted late, interest, annual fees, foreign transaction fees. The statement gives the new balance to reconcile the liability account in QuickBooks or Xero. Personal cards matter because business purchases on them have to be recorded as owner contributions or reimbursements, and they never appear in a feed you control.
What exactly to ask for
Every statement closing in the month you are closing, one per card, including the summary page and the full transaction list. For a personal card, ask for the statement and for the client to mark which charges were for the business. On a cleanup, ask for every statement since the card was last reconciled.
What to check when it arrives
- The closing date and new balance are on the file, and the previous balance matches the last statement you reconciled.
- Payments to the card match payments leaving the business bank account.
- Personal-card statements have the business charges marked, so you record only those.
Email to send your client
Replace the bracketed parts. The same text fits in the message of a DokuTrak request (up to 1,000 characters).
Subject: Card statements for this month’s books
Hi [Client name],
For this month’s books I need the statement for every card used for business expenses, including any employee cards and any personal card you used for the business.
The PDF from the card issuer’s website is the best copy, usually under Statements. For a personal card, please highlight or list the business charges, and I will record only those.
Could you send them by [date]? If a card has no online access, a clear scan of the paper statement is fine, and I am happy to help you find it.
Thank you, [Your name]
Ask once. DokuTrak does the chasing.
- Your client uploads from one link, with no account and no password.
- Reminders go out on a schedule, by default 2, 5, 10 and 14 days after the request, until the file arrives.
- With AI review switched on in your workspace (it is off by default), each upload gets a first pass that flags a file that is not a credit card statement or an unreadable or blurry scan. It says so when it is not sure.
- You accept every file or mark it for re-upload, and your client gets the note by email. The AI never accepts a file.