BobaBS: From PDF to Excel in Seconds
A simple, secure tool that saves Malaysian accountants and business owners hours of tedious work by converting bank statement PDFs into analysis-ready Excel files right in the browser.
The Challenge: A Small Problem, a Big Headache
It all started a year ago with a seemingly small complaint from our own accountant at Else Studio. The problem? Converting PDF bank statements into Excel for analysis and bookkeeping. It was a tedious, manual task that even the latest AI tools couldn’t seem to get 100% right, consistently.
This sparked our tech lead Kuan’s interest. It was a real-world problem affecting real people—a problem that, in this day and age, should have already been solved.
A quick search online revealed a handful of international tools claiming to do just that. Problem solved? Not quite. For Malaysian users, these tools came with their own set of issues:
- Cost: International software often comes with a premium price tag for Malaysians.
- Accuracy: With each bank using its own unique table formats and statement styles, the accuracy of these one-size-fits-all tools was always a gamble.
- Privacy: All of them required uploading sensitive financial PDFs to a third-party server.
These three hurdles were enough to send our accountant right back to manual data entry. We knew there had to be a better way.
Our Solution: Secure, Accurate, and Affordable
Kuan decided to tackle the problem head-on, but with a crucial principle from the start: privacy first.
Storing sensitive client data on a server was a non-starter for our small team. The solution had to work entirely within the user’s browser, ensuring financial information never left their computer. While tricky, it was achievable. The real puzzle was decoding the unique PDF formats of each Malaysian bank. For example, Maybank, the country’s largest bank, uses a single column for transactions with a “+” or “-” to show debits and credits, while others use separate columns. That was the fun part.
After nailing down the logic for Maybank, Public Bank, and CIMB, we hit another challenge: getting enough sample bank statements for development and testing. This is inherently difficult due to the private nature of the documents.
Nine months ago, the first prototype was ready. Since then, our accountant friend has converted over 5,000 pages of bank statements with perfect accuracy, saving her what she estimates to be “weeks of hours.” The tool itself can process a 100-page PDF in seconds.
Recently, Else Studio decided to invest in this prototype, adding professional design, UX refinements, a proper payment system, and rigorous QA testing.
The result is our very first original product: BobaBS.
The name, short for Boba Bank Statement, reflects our mission: to help fellow accountants and business owners with this tedious work in exchange for the price of a boba tea. Our small team and low overhead mean we can offer a powerful tool without the hefty price tag.