How should I prepare bank statements before uploading?

You can hand CounselPro a shoebox or a filing cabinet. Drop everything you have into one PDF and it will find the accounts, the cycles, and the transactions on its own. Or spend a few minutes preparing the files first and get the cleanest read the extractor can give you. Both work, so the choice comes down to how much time you have and how tight the numbers need to be.

Can I just upload everything in one file?

Yes. If the client sent you 4 years of records as one 900-page dump, upload it as it came. During processing CounselPro splits the file into each account and each statement period and reads each one on its own, so you never have to sort the pages by hand.

There is one hard limit: a single file has to be under 100MB. Anything larger is rejected at the uploader, so break the pile into a few files and upload them all to the same project.

Uploading everything at once is also what lets CounselPro tell you which statements you are still missing. It can only spot a gap in the months if it can see every month you do have.

What makes statement extraction most accurate?

Three things, roughly in order of how much they matter:

• Digital PDFs straight from the bank. A PDF the bank generated carries real text, so every figure reads exactly as printed. A scan or a phone photo holds no text at all, only a picture of it, so the quality of the scan sets the ceiling. When you have the choice, download the original from the bank's site instead of scanning the paper copy.

• One statement period per PDF. The extractor is at its sharpest when a file holds a single cycle for a single account, first page to last. CounselPro finds and splits the periods inside a combined file on its own, but a file that arrives already split gives it less to work out.

• Pages nobody has marked up. Every line, arrow, box, note, and redaction on the page is something the extractor has to interpret. The cleaner the copy, the less stands between the extractor and the figures underneath.

Should I delete pages that have no transactions?

You can, and some people do it to keep the page count down. There is a real risk, though, so weigh it before you start pulling pages.

Part of how CounselPro decides where one statement ends and the next begins is the page numbers printed on the page ("Page 3 of 9"). Delete pages and that sequence breaks, which can throw the split off. When the split is wrong, everything downstream inherits the problem: the wrong pages land in the wrong cycle, and reconciliation has less to check the balances against.

Marketing inserts and blank backs still count as pages, so trimming them does save you something. Weigh that against the risk, because a handful of pages saved is a poor trade for a split that lands in the wrong place. Unless the padding is heavy, leaving the statement whole is the safer move.

Do highlights, notes, and redactions affect the extraction?

They can. CounselPro reads everything on the page, printed and handwritten alike. That is how it captures the payee and the memo line off a check image, and it is also why your own handwriting ends up in the data.

So a circled amount, a margin note in a paralegal's hand, a highlighter box drawn around a deposit, or a black bar over an account number all give the extractor something extra to sort out. Marks that sit on top of a figure can hide the figure itself. Upload the copy nobody has worked on, and if the only version you have is marked up, ask for a clean one.

Redaction is the case where you may not have a choice. Keep it to the fewest marks you can get away with, and read the transactions on those pages closely once processing finishes.

When is it worth preparing the files first?

If you are triaging a new matter and want a picture of the money by this afternoon, upload the whole pile and let CounselPro sort it. If the numbers are going into an exhibit or a report you will defend, it is worth 20 minutes to pull clean PDFs from the bank and split them by statement period.

Either way, the extraction is only as good as the paper it started from. If a file keeps coming back failed, a rough scan is the usual reason. See why a statement fails and how to retry it and which file formats CounselPro supports.