Import from CSV into investments
After setting up my 401K in MoneyDance I discovered Insperity only offers transaction history in .csv format. Like the poster at http://help.infinitekind.com/discussions/questions/3511-importing-t... I would really like a solution that does not involve me manually transcribing my transactions every two weeks. Please help, how hard can it be to make a loop that batch assigns certain fields to certain transactions. Even if the importer were wrong, just having grab date, number of shares, and value would save a ton of time.
Thanks,
David
Support Staff 2 Posted by Ethan Tupelo on 14 Mar, 2012 02:12 PM
Hi David,
Thank you for your suggestion. As you read on that other thread, the main problem is that banks are sending data in non-standard formats when they send it as CSV files as opposed to many other possible options. Therefore, what needs to happen is for the CSV data to be converted into a more standard format. There is an existing suggestion ticket for creating some kind of work around, which I have attached to this thread.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,
Ethan Tupelo
Moneydance Support
3 Posted by davidsmoot on 15 Mar, 2012 02:30 AM
I may be blind but I do not see a suggestion ticket attachment.
4 Posted by -Kevin N. on 15 Mar, 2012 12:28 PM
Hi David,
In the upper right-hand corner of the forum page for this thread is a ticket # 3614. The text of the ticket is only viewable by the MD Support Staff.
HTH -Kevin N.
5 Posted by Gabriel on 12 Jun, 2012 01:27 AM
I want to support David's request. It seems to me that more and more investment banks are moving away from OFX or QIF. A tool that would allow to import investment transactions in CSV into Moneydance would be extremely helpful.
Support Staff 6 Posted by Ben Spencer on 14 Jun, 2012 11:21 PM
A csv file is essentially just a table of rows and columns. There is no standard way of storing transactions in such a file. It is relatively straight forward to handle this with regular bank account as there are only so many permutations of the number of columns and column names to match upto the fields in a Moneydance transaction. (Having said that it is still not uncommon to find an csv file for a checking account that cannot be imported.)
Investment transactions do not lend them selves well to being read from csv files. This is because of the complexity of investment transactions and the variety of investment transactions. Each type of investment transaction differs in the number of columns it would use and in the type of data stored in those columns. As a result of this the number of possible ways investment transactions could be stored in a csv file is very large. I have taken a look at csv files produce by a few of the most popular trading sites and it is not at all clear how an importer could be written that could account for the types of variations I've seen. Even if an importer were created that could import a significant fraction of csv investment files, it would need a very complicated user interface to let the user specify how the file is formatted.
I could imagine writing a dedicated importer for the csv files produced by a small number of the major trade sites. And this would be fragile as there is no standard way the data can be stored in such a file, the produce could change it at any time and break the importer.
I think its a real shame that some companies are only providing data in an unstructured csv file (csv files are really orders of magnitude worse than any of the other options.) when there is a perfectly fine standard file format they could be using. I encourage you to contact those companies and complain that they are not providing OFX.
I am afraid I think its quite unlikely that an investment csv import will be written any time soon.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
7 Posted by G Coutts on 24 Feb, 2013 07:03 PM
Take a look at Investoscope (http://www.investoscope.com) they have a pretty functional/flexible way to import csv files. It may give you some inspiration. Regrettably they do not have a mobile app to sync with or the facility to handle all my other accounting needs or I wouldn't be responding.
8 Posted by Gabriel Elia on 25 Feb, 2013 03:43 AM
I found a tool that works well. http://icreateofx.co.uk/invest.php