Bank of Montreal [BMO] review: PDF E-statements protected with permissions password

I have a number of corporate clients to which I prepare their Canadian Corporate Returns. In all cases they have a BMO Business Bank account and BMO Business MasterCard account. My clients provide me with their 12-month set of e-statements in pdf format. Unfortunately, I am only allowed to print them thus forcing me to manually enter detailed transaction data into an Excel worksheet in order to build financial data for corporate return processing.

I cannot convert them to Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, or I cannot select and copy transaction data from a displayed pdf document in an Excel worksheet. If I try to copy data from the pdf statement or convert to Word or Excel, I must enter a Permissions Password.

My clients have no idea of this Permissions Password, so I am faced with manually entering all detailed transaction data from printed statements. It is my understanding that since BMO is the author of the e-statements, BMO would be the ones who would know the Permission Password.

I am not aware of any other Canadian Bank that puts this type of restriction on their business bank statements. I can easily download transaction data to a .csv file, or convert the pdf doc to a Microsoft app, or select and copy transaction data from the pdf doc to build excel worksheets with full transaction data.

I would be pleased to discuss this at length with your technical support team.

Thank You

Helen Barrett

[protected]

Cell [protected]

PO Box 475 427 Gate St

Niagara on the Lake ON

L0S 1J0

helen.[protected]@cogeco.ca