Launched CleanStmt: No more merged cells in bank statement conversions
Hey Indie Hackers 👋
I just launched CleanStmt after 3 months of building. It's a bank statement PDF to Excel converter with one core promise: zero merged cells.
## The problem I'm solving
Every accountant and bookkeeper I know hates merged cells. They break Excel formulas, pivot tables, and QuickBooks imports. But every PDF converter I tried gave me messy outputs with merged headers and subtotals.
## What makes it different
- Zero merged cells guarantee — every transaction in its own row
- 6 export formats — Excel, CSV, QuickBooks (QBO), OFX, QIF, IIF
- AI-powered OCR — works with any bank's PDFs and scanned images
- Privacy first — files process in-memory, auto-delete after 1 hour
- No signup required — completely free to use
## Tech stack
Next.js 14, TypeScript, Claude Vision API for OCR, serverless on Vercel.
## Early traction
Launched on Product Hunt tomorrow (July 6). Already got positive feedback from CPAs who tested it. The "no merged cells" promise resonates strongly with the target audience.
## What I'm looking for
Feedback from anyone who works with financial data. And if you know accountants or bookkeepers who struggle with bank statement conversions, I'd love an intro.
Try it: cleanstmt.com
Happy to answer questions about the build or the problem space!
The zero-merged-cells promise is the right hill to pick. Merged headers are exactly what silently breaks a QBO import two steps later, and most converters treat that as cosmetic. The harder part now is probably reach: the bookkeepers who'd pay for this are searching 'bank statement to QBO,' not browsing launches. That's the problem I keep working on with AppGild. Where are your first users finding you so far, communities or search?
Thanks for the insight on QBO — you're spot on. Merged headers breaking downstream imports is exactly the pain we kept hearing about. To answer your question: our first users actually came from personal referrals. I built this initially for a friend who was spending hours cleaning up bank PDFs for their bookkeeping. Word spread from there to a few small accounting firms in their network. And good timing on the QBO point — we recently shipped QBO format export, so users can go straight from PDF to a QuickBooks-ready file without the intermediate Excel step. That was directly inspired by feedback like yours. Search is definitely the next frontier for us. Appreciate the thoughtful reply and the validation on the positioning.