Eastern Bank, you(r statements) suck

[milktree]

I've been a customer of Wainwright Bank for a bunch of years. But earlier this year they got bought by Eastern Bank. This has made balancing the checkbook way more difficult. Not because the transition wasn't smooth (it was) but because Eastern Bank arranges the monthly statements in a way I swear was designed to make it difficult to catch errors.


This is the right way to do it: (and the way Wainwright did it)

date	desc.	credit	debit	ballance
3/1	Beginning ballance			5,351.50
3/7	check #12		123.40	5,228.10
3/12	check #13		29.20	5,198.90
3/15	check #14		177.30	5,021.60
3/20	deposit	1,500		6,521.60
3/25	check #15		250.17	6,217.43
3/28	interest	2.34		6,273.77
3/31	Ending Balance			6,273.77

Right? Easy to know what happened when, it matches the way everyone balances their actual checkbook.

But Eastern does it like this:
checking account #123450001

date	desc.	credit	debit	Ending balance
3/1	Beginning ballance			5,351.50
3/20	deposit	1,500
3/28	interest	2.34

check summary

check no.	date	amount		check no.	date	amount		check no.	date	amount
12	3/7	123.40		13	3/12	29.20		14	3/15	177.30
15	3/25	250.17

balance summary

date	balance		date	balance		date	balance
3/1	5,351.50		3/15	5,021.60		3/25	6,271.43
3/7	5,228.10		3/20	6,521.60		3/28	6,273.77
3/12	5,198.90

There's two options: 1) The monkey who designed the statement knows how to pull data from a database and present it on paper, but has never actually seen an actual checkbook before, or 2) that brain-dead way of looking at money is an established way I've never heard of.