[GNC] Transaction Imports

Stu Perlman sgperlman at gmail.com
Mon Apr 11 14:19:58 EDT 2022


Hello Everyone,

I am looking for some guidance on how to import a few hundred transactions
from my 401(k) account.
Unfortunately, the plan administrator does not offer a good option for
exporting the transaction data but I am able to get what I need with some
basic web scraping.

I have been experimenting with creating a multi-split CSV import from the
data that I have captured.
What I wanted to do was a file layout such as:

*Date,Description,Account,Deposit,SharesAsMemo,Price*
01/04/2021,Contribution,Cash,-299.26
,,Vanguard Institutional Index Institutional Fund,299.26,0.916289038,326.6
01/19/2021,Contribution,Cash,-299.26
,,Vanguard Institutional Index Institutional Fund,299.26,0.892008703,335.49


My wishful thinking was that I could put the number of shares into the memo
column for reference (but that the system would auto-calculate that number
using the provided Price and transaction amount ("Deposit")).
I hit a blocker on the second to last step of the import wizard with the
message: "*The account 'Vanguard Institutional Index Fund' has a different
commodity to the one required, 'US Dollar'. Please choose a different
account.*"

So I'm wondering if there are other ways I can go about what I'm trying to
accomplish?  I started with the CSV importer because I figured it would be
the easiest record layout to create but I'm not against using a different
format if what I want to accomplish can be done.

I have a backup plan which is that I will NOT do the multi-split import and
will just select the Cash account for all rows in the Import Preview
screen. I could pack the memo field with the ticker symbol, price,
quantity, and total debit and let it all dump into the Imbalance-USD
account. I would then have to either manually fix them one by one or
possibly script it out.  I have done this with success in the past but
would rather just get it right at the data import step if that's in any
way possible.

My thanks in advance for any advice offered.

- Stu


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