A bank account analysis statement is the monthly report your commercial bank sends showing every service charge on your business account and whether the balances you kept there earned enough credit to cover those charges. It is part invoice, part scorecard. Read it carefully and you can shave real money off what your business pays for banking each year; ignore it and you almost certainly overpay.
The statement has a predictable structure. Balances at the top, an earnings credit calculation, an itemized table of service charges, and a net settlement at the bottom. Working through it in that order is the fastest way to understand what you are being billed for and why.
Start With the Balances
The first section tracks how money moved through the account during the cycle. Two balances matter.
The ledger balance is the total showing in the account at the close of each business day. The collected balance is smaller because it counts only funds that have actually cleared the banking system. The gap between the two is float, the lag between depositing a check and the bank being able to use the money.
From the collected balance, the bank calculates the investable balance. This is the number that drives everything else on the statement, because it is the figure your earnings credit is applied to. Some banks still subtract an internal reserve reduction from the collected balance before arriving at the investable figure. That practice can be confusing, because the Federal Reserve eliminated mandatory reserve requirements for depository institutions in March 2020, setting all ratios to zero percent.1Federal Reserve. Reserve Requirements Any haircut your bank still applies is its own policy, not a regulatory requirement. At some institutions the reduction runs as high as 10 percent, so it is worth asking what yours is and whether it still exists.
How the Earnings Credit Is Calculated
The bank assigns a variable rate called the Earnings Credit Rate, or ECR, to your investable balance. The ECR works like an internal interest rate, except that instead of paying cash, it generates a dollar credit that offsets your service charges. The formula: investable balance multiplied by the ECR, multiplied by the number of days in the billing cycle, divided by 365.2American Federal Bank. Sample Calculation of Earnings Credit
A quick example. If your average investable balance is $500,000, the ECR is 4.00 percent, and the month has 30 days, the credit is $500,000 × 0.04 × (30 ÷ 365) = $1,643.84. That credit exists only on the statement. It never lands in your account as spendable cash, and at most banks any credits you do not use by cycle end expire. You cannot withdraw them, roll them forward, or convert them to interest.
Banks set the ECR in different ways. Some peg it to a benchmark such as the 91-day U.S. Treasury bill rate. Others set it at their own discretion with no published index behind it. There is no rule requiring the bank to tell you how the rate is derived, which is one reason the ECR is almost always negotiable.
The Service Charge Table
The largest section of the statement is a line-by-line table of every service you used during the month. Each row typically shows a service description, the volume used, a per-unit price, and the total charge.
Common items you will see:
- Account maintenance, a flat monthly fee for keeping the analyzed account open, often $20 to $75 depending on the bank and account tier.
- Checks paid, a per-item fee each time the bank processes a check drawn on your account, commonly $0.10 to $0.50.
- ACH transactions, charged on debits and credits whether you originate them (payroll, vendor payments) or receive them.
- Wire transfers, usually priced per transaction and significantly higher than ACH, with separate pricing for domestic and international.
- Deposits and deposited items, charged per deposit and per individual item inside it.
Treasury management and fraud prevention services sit alongside basic transaction fees. Positive Pay, where the bank matches presented checks against a file of checks you actually issued, usually carries both a monthly fee and a per-item charge. ACH debit blocks and filters appear as separate line items. Controlled disbursement, account reconciliation, and online platform access round out the typical list. These services add cost, but dropping fraud prevention to save a few dollars on the analysis statement is a false economy.
If you bank with more than one institution, look for AFP Service Codes next to each line. The Association for Financial Professionals created this standardized numbering system so the same service carries the same code at every bank.3Association for Financial Professionals. AFP Service Codes Domestic codes are six digits, global codes are eight. With codes in hand, you can compare pricing across banks without guessing whether two differently named items are really the same thing. Banks also deliver this data electronically, typically as an EDI 822 file in the United States or a camt.086 ISO 20022 message internationally, both of which can feed a treasury management system for automated fee tracking.4SWIFT. BSB CAMT.086 Implementation Guide
The Net Settlement at the Bottom
The final section compares total analyzed charges against total earnings credits. The difference is your net position for the month, and that one number tells you whether your balances carried their weight.
- Fully offset. Credits equal or exceed charges, and you pay nothing out of pocket for services that month.
- Net fee due. Charges exceed credits, and the bank debits the shortfall directly from your account, usually on a set date each month.
- Excess credits. Credits are well above charges, no fee is owed, but the surplus disappears at cycle end.
A net fee means your balances were too low for your transaction volume. The fix is either a higher average collected balance or a higher ECR. Excess credits are the opposite problem and often the more expensive one over time, because idle funds in a non-earning account could be earning interest, reducing debt, or funding operations instead.
Analyzed Account or Interest-Bearing Account
If your statement regularly shows large excess credits, it is worth knowing you have alternatives. The Dodd-Frank Act repealed the federal prohibition on paying interest on commercial demand deposit accounts effective July 21, 2011, and interest-bearing business checking has existed since.5Federal Register. Prohibition Against Payment of Interest on Demand Deposits
The key difference is tax treatment. Earnings credits offset fees and are not income, so there is nothing to report to the IRS. Interest paid on deposits is taxable income. A business with heavy service charges and matched balances often does better on an analyzed account because the full credit value hits fees without tax drag. A business with low transaction volume and high balances often does better in an interest-bearing account, because ECR credits would otherwise expire unused. Some banks also offer hybrid structures that pay interest on balances above the level needed to cover analyzed fees.
Where to Push Back
Reading the statement is only useful if you act on what you find. A few places give the fastest return.
Check the ECR against the current 91-day Treasury bill yield or your bank’s posted rate on interest-bearing commercial deposits. If the ECR is meaningfully lower, call your relationship manager. Banks expect this conversation, and the rate often moves after one call, especially if you can point to a competitor’s number.
Scan the service table for items you do not recognize or services you never requested. Banks sometimes add services during onboarding that the business never uses, and those charges run month after month until someone flags them. Watch for volume spikes too. A sudden jump in deposited-item charges might mean your team is making many small deposits when fewer larger ones would cost less.
Ask what reserve reduction, if any, the bank still applies to your collected balance. Since the Fed’s requirement has been zero since 2020, any deduction is the bank’s own policy.1Federal Reserve. Reserve Requirements If yours still takes a 10 percent haircut, that is 10 percent less in earnings credits every month, and worth pushing back on.