What is the difference between APR and APY?

APR is the nominal annual rate before compounding. APY (also called effective annual rate or EAR) is what you actually earn or owe per year once compounding is applied. APY is always >= APR; they are equal only when interest compounds exactly once per year.

Which compounding frequency should I pick?

Match it to the product. Credit cards almost always compound daily. Most mortgages and personal loans compound monthly. EU retail bonds and many fixed deposits compound annually or semi-annually. If the contract doesn't say, default to the billing cycle — monthly for monthly statements, daily for revolving credit.

Why is the per-period rate so much smaller?

Because it is applied many times. A 12% nominal APR compounded monthly applies a 1% rate twelve times — and the compounding of those 1% steps lifts the effective rate from 12% to 12.6825%.

Is the 'rule of 72' the same as time-to-double?

Close but not identical. The rule of 72 is a mental-math shortcut — 72 divided by the rate gives an approximate doubling time. The exact value is ln(2) / ln(1 + EAR). For rates between 4% and 12% the rule of 72 is within a few months; outside that range the error grows.

Does the future value account for taxes or inflation?

No. It is the nominal future value at the effective rate. To get real (inflation-adjusted) returns, subtract the expected inflation rate from your nominal rate before computing. Taxes vary by country and account type — we don't model them.

Can I use this for a loan instead of a deposit?

Yes — the math is identical. A 19.99% credit-card APR compounded daily costs you 22.13% effective per year on revolving balances. That gap is exactly the compounding premium the issuer earns.

What is the best PDF bank statement converter?

The best converter depends on your accounting software. For QuickBooks, look for one that exports a native .qbo file (Web Connect format) — that skips column mapping entirely. For Xero, a tool that produces a Xero-template CSV with merged Money-In/Out columns will save the most time. StatementEdge handles both natively, plus Sage, Excel, CSV, and generic OFX, with automatic balance-chain reconciliation that flags any extraction error before you import.

How do I convert a PDF bank statement to QuickBooks?

The most reliable path is to convert the PDF directly into a QuickBooks Web Connect file (.qbo) instead of going through CSV. CSV import in QBO requires manual column mapping and breaks on UK/EU number formats. A .qbo file imports natively with no mapping. Upload your PDF to a converter that supports .qbo output (such as StatementEdge), download the .qbo, then in QBO go to Banking → Upload from file → File upload.

How do I convert a bank statement PDF to Excel?

Use a converter that respects your bank's locale (US, UK, EU, etc.) and emits an Excel file with ISO dates and signed amount columns. Generic OCR tools often misread comma decimals as thousands separators or split Money-In/Money-Out columns into two separate amount fields. Specialised converters like StatementEdge normalise these automatically before export.

Are PDF bank statement converters safe to use?

Safety depends on three things: where the file is processed, whether it's retained, and whether your data is used for AI training. StatementEdge processes files in the EU (Frankfurt), auto-deletes the source PDF within 1 hour by default, and uses AI providers with no-training settings enabled. Look for these guarantees on any converter you're considering — many tools store statements indefinitely and may be in jurisdictions without GDPR protection.

What's the difference between QBO, QFX, and OFX file formats?

All three are based on the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) SGML format from the late 1990s. .ofx is the generic format, accepted by GnuCash, MoneyDance, Beancount, and many open-source tools. .qfx is Quicken's flavour, identical to OFX 1.0.2 with Quicken-specific headers. .qbo is Intuit's QuickBooks Desktop and Online flavour, which adds an INTU.BID tag identifying the originating financial institution. For QuickBooks use .qbo; for Quicken use .qfx; for anything else use .ofx.

How do I convert scanned (image) bank statements?

Scanned PDFs don't have a text layer, so traditional CSV-export tools fail on them. You need a converter with vision capability — one that can read pixels, not just embedded text. StatementEdge detects scanned pages automatically and routes them through a vision model with the same balance-chain verification as digital PDFs, so you still get a reconciled output even from an image-only source.

Can I batch-convert multiple bank statements at once?

Yes. StatementEdge accepts multiple PDFs in a single drag-and-drop or file selection — each becomes its own conversion job and the results page shows per-file status with the reconciliation verdict for each. For programmatic batch processing, the REST API is available on every plan (free tier included) and exposes the same conversion endpoint.

Interest rate calculator — effective APR from compounding frequency

Nominal vs effective: why the two numbers differ

A nominal annual rate is the headline number on a loan or savings account — for example, 12% per year. The effective annual rate (often called APY for deposits, EAR for loans) is what you actually earn or owe once compounding is factored in. Compound the same 12% monthly instead of once a year and the effective rate becomes 12.6825% — you earn interest on interest twelve times per year instead of once.

The formula is straightforward: EAR = (1 + r/n)^n - 1, where r is the nominal annual rate and n is the number of compounding periods per year. As n grows toward infinity (continuous compounding), the formula collapses to EAR = e^r - 1.

Why it matters when you read a bank statement

Most consumer credit-card statements quote a nominal APR but actually charge interest daily. A 19.99% nominal APR compounded daily lands at 22.13% effective — the gap is real cash you owe. Mortgages in the EU usually publish the effective rate (TAEG / AER) by law so consumers can compare apples to apples; US statements still default to nominal APR.

If you're reconciling a credit-card or revolving-credit statement in our main converter, paste the issuer's nominal APR here first to sanity-check the actual interest charge line.

The five compounding frequencies you'll see in the wild

Annually (1×): Old-school savings bonds and most EU government-issued retail bonds. Effective = nominal.
Semi-annually (2×): Most US Treasuries and many corporate bonds. A 6% nominal becomes 6.09% effective.
Quarterly (4×): Common on EU business-loan and fixed-deposit products. A 6% nominal becomes 6.136% effective.
Monthly (12×): Mortgages, personal loans, most savings accounts. A 6% nominal becomes 6.168% effective.
Daily (365×) or continuous: Credit cards and some money-market funds. A 6% nominal becomes ~6.183%. The gap between daily and continuous is tiny — under 0.001 pp.

Reading the results

Effective annual rate: the number to compare across products. Always use this — never compare a nominal rate to an effective one.
Per-period rate: what each compounding step actually applies. Useful for verifying line items on a statement (the monthly interest line on a credit card, for instance).
Time to double: exact closed-form value of ln(2) / ln(1 + EAR). The rule-of-72 approximation is within a few months for rates between 4% and 12%.
Future value: simple compounding — P × (1 + EAR)^years. No deposits, no withdrawals. For more complex cashflows, you want an annuity calculator.

What this calculator does not do

We compute pure compound-interest figures. We do not model ongoing deposits or withdrawals (annuities), tax drag, inflation, or amortising loan schedules with fees. If you need an amortisation schedule for a mortgage, a dedicated mortgage calculator from your bank or central bank will be more honest about front-loaded interest.

For analysing actual statement transactions and verifying the interest charged matches the published rate, drop your statement PDF into our bank statement converter first — get the transactions into a spreadsheet, then come back here to cross-check the rate math.

Interest rate calculator — turn a nominal APR into the true effective rate