Two underlying styles: SGML and XML
OFX (Open Financial Exchange) has been around since the late 1990s, and its file structure reflects that. Older OFX 1.x exports use SGML, a markup style where some tags don't need a closing counterpart — a line like <TRNAMT>-42.35 is valid on its own. Newer OFX versions use proper XML, where every tag is closed. Both are still produced by banks today, so an OFX reader generally needs to handle either style.
Opened in a text editor, both look like a block of nested tags — readable in principle, but not organized as a table, and a statement with many transactions can run long.
What's typically inside
An OFX file usually starts with account information — the bank and account identifiers, and the statement's currency — followed by a list of transactions. Each transaction commonly includes a posted date, an exact amount, a payee or description, a unique transaction ID, and sometimes a check number. Bank and credit-card statements are the common case; investment and tax sections exist in the OFX specification but are a separate part of it.
Converting to CSV or Excel
Turning an OFX file into CSV or Excel puts each transaction on its own row, with the posted date, amount, payee and reference fields split into columns you can sort or filter directly — much faster than scanning tags in a text editor, especially for a statement with more than a handful of transactions.
Bankfile's OFX converters read both the SGML and XML styles and run entirely in your browser, so the file is parsed and converted on your device without being uploaded anywhere.
If your file is labeled QFX or QBO instead
Some banks label an OFX-family export as .qfx (for Quicken) or .qbo (for QuickBooks) rather than .ofx. All three share the same underlying structure, so if you're not sure which label applies to your file, a converter that detects the OFX family and asks you to confirm the source is a reliable way to convert it correctly regardless of the extension on the download.