What

A BAI2 file is a Cash Management Balance Reporting specification used by US banks. It is a text file of fixed-width records: file, group and account headers, transaction detail, continuation records, and trailers that carry control totals.

Amounts are often stored as integers with an implied decimal scale, so 75000 can mean 750.00. Unknown type codes should be kept, not dropped.

Why

Excel cannot parse those records. Opening a .bai or .bai2 in a spreadsheet shows broken columns, not transactions. Without a converter you cannot filter, age, or reconcile the statement, and you cannot see whether the file's own trailers already disagree.

Control-total mismatches mean the file may be truncated. You usually still need the rows — the mismatch is a finding, not a reason to throw the statement away.

How

Drop a .bai, .bai2 or .txt statement on the BAI2 converter. It writes one row per transaction and checks that the opening balance plus the net of every transaction equals the closing balance declared in the file's own trailers. Download CSV or XLSX.

Next, run the data-quality checker on the same statement, then reconcile it to the cash book. A synthetic sample on the converter page shows a file whose control totals do not tie.