Downloading transactions and positions into a new portfolio

[daveholobaugh]

I did not export my USAA transactions and positions. All I did was retrieve them directly from USAA into Fund Manager.

[Mark]

Hi DogNo1,

Are you trying to "retrieve" from USAA, or have you downloaded a file from their website you are trying to import? The easiest way is to use the New Portfolio Wizard, and have it retrieve "Transactions and Positions". This feature uses USAA's "Open Financial Exchange" server to get all available transactions, and your current positions. Most brokers only keep transactions available on their OFX servers for a fixed period (sounds like this is about 2 years in this case). So, you can only get transactions for this time period, and then Fund Manager will make an adjustment entry at the beginning of this period, to get your current balances correct, as reported by the broker.

If you want historical records longer than this, you'll have to find another source, besides the broker's OFX server. Here are some options:

1) Maybe you can log into their web server, and download a file for the full history, which you can then "import". I don't have any information on how to do this for USAA, or even if it is available, but you can look on their website, or call them up.

2) Since you have your historical data in Money, this is probably the easiest way to get this information into Fund Manager. Just export from Money to a QIF file, and then import this into Fund Manager using "File / Import / Transactions / Quicken (*.QIF)...".

3) Manually enter the data that wasn't retrieved.

Once you get all your data into Fund Manager, you can start retrieving transactions from USAA going forward.

[DogNo1]

Hi. I have actually held some positions since 1991, selling and adding shares along the way. I was able to retrieve posisions and transactions going back to Mar 2009 using the Fund Manager's retrieval facility. Could you kindly explain how you were able to retrieve your transactions back to 1971? I tried downloading all of my account positions and transactions using both qif and csv files after my activity was shown on-screen in the USAA portfolio manager but there seemed to be a problem with the positons and transactions in Fund Manager after that. I found some positions bought more than two years ago not showing at all and many for which the holdings are incomplete due to the two-year retrieval period.

I am having nightmares about going back and manually editing all of my transactions prior to Mar 2009. I could import from Money but I have entered many unorthodox trades in it to reconcile different balance discrepancies that I would painstakingly have to correct in Fund Manager.

What to do? Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi DogNo1,

It sounds like your broker only has transactions available on their OFX server back to Mar 2009. This is not unusual, to only have them for a certain time period.

I don't think I mentioned anything about transactions back to 1971...

Your options are still the 3 that I mentioned in my last post:

1) Try to download from their web server a longer history, and then import.

2) Import from MS Money

3) Manually enter.

or, I guess the 4th is to just retrieve back to Mar 2009, and then edit the position adjustment entry to enter your correct cost basis. This should leave you set up with all your correct positions as of today, and all history for the last 1.5 years.

[DogNo1]

Hi Mark,

I had wanted to keep my historical gains and losses on each position that I ever had but that is looking impratical. Actually, I can get a complete listing of all my transactions and the details concerning my present holdings on Gainskeeper, which I have used each year to calculate my gains and losses. There doesn't seem to be any way to get the Gainskeeper file to save to an Excel or CSV file for import into Fund Manager but I can print out a nice PDF document showing all of the details concerning my present holdings. I'm going to try downloading my positions from USAA to Fund Manager and filling in those that are missing by hand. Unfortunately, Microsoft Money Plus seems to be the only software that will track ten-year-old historical records. Please let me know if you have any additional ideas. Thanks

[Mark]

Hi DogNo1,

I understand wanting to keep an accurate historical record as far back as possible. Unfortunately, you can only get it back so far from your broker. Have you given #2 option a try? It might be worth a quick experiment to export from Money, and import into Fund Manager. Try it into a new, empty sub-portfolio. All of your transaction history should come in fine.

[DogNo1]

Hi Mark, I'll try to combine MS Money positions with those retrieved from USAA but the last time that I tried this, the symbols for the holdings didn't load correctly from USAA and I never was able to straighten it out. As the OP noted, things don't seem to load correctly from the USAA server. It looks as though I might end up doing most enteries by hand unless I can find a way to get the Gainskeeper data into a format that Fund Manager can accept.

[Mark]

Hi DogNo1,

If your MS Money is all up to date, I would suggest importing from there, so you can get your full history. Then, make sure all your balances are correct, which they should be if your import worked properly. Now, you can set up your account to start retrieving from USAA going forward. There are a couple differences in the import, and retrieving from USAA you might consider. First, importing from Money is done with a .QIF file, which if your QIF file contains security information will update the name and symbol, but not CUSIP. If your QIF file only contains transactions, only the Name field is updated when you import from a QIF file without security info. When you start retrieving from USAA, the updates are done based on matching the CUSIP field. So, you will want to update the CUSIP of all your investments before retrieving, so that new incoming transactions will go into the correct, existing investments.

What is the "OP"? I don't think there are any specific problems retrieving from USAA, other than the limited time history of your transactions. This is pretty normal, as most OFX servers only keep transactions for some fixed amount of time.