by rlaggren » Sun Mar 07, 2021 12:44 pm
Mark
Please create the name of the transaction log file, xmldump.txt, with an appended date time. This could be a checkbox option for those who don't want to use the storage space. However, space is really cheap now and the value of this simple change could be huge in certain situations. This might, or not, also be applied to other logs but the transaction trail looks like the most important, by far.
I discovered this need because, for one of our holdings, after a name change following a change in the company's securities administration "partner" (and _no_ other change), there appear to be more than a year's worth of dividend transactions which have disappeared from Fidelity's records - at least those available at their online site. Even more attention-getting, the dividends have disappeared from the cash holding. At this time, there appears to be no remaining record of our owning this security prior to the name change, at least on their website. Clearly, this could become a REAL ISSUE and the files of Fidelity historic ofx downloads might prove most helpful.
Another tweak (but way less important) would be to place the logs in their own directory and allow the user to specify that directory. Potentially the directory(s) could be per portfolio, but again, even further down the list. However, having a log dir, particularly one the user specified in a place they could easily locate (well hopefully, anyway), can make referencing and trouble shooting noticeably easier - just by making the logs quick & easy to find. Drilling down into the system program directories isn't as functional as opening a dir in user space. This would be something like the backup direction option, I think.
Regards,
Rufus