Quicken TSP Share Price Updater

[Rolo]

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coolhand wrote:

I like that idea and would participate. It sounds like it is independent of any personal financial software we useat home (I use MS Money).

Yeah, it would be strictly thru a web browser and the web server will do all the number-crunching. I'm all about making things require little-to-no effort.

[line]

The Quicken TSP Share Price Updater is a bit of a misnomer. All it is is a CSV file (text) that works in Quicken. If the current CSV file does not work, then if someone posts the requirements for M$ Money, I can add one for you guys, too.

 

[Copperhead]

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Didn't mean to confuse anyone, but yes, Quicken 2005 can import the file. I followed the directions posted and it worked fine, other than noted.

To further explain the problem I had: I input each TSP fund in on the 6th of November. I then tried to updateas far back as possibleby cutting and pasting all the text into a notepad file then importing it into quicken. The data went back to 1 June, wellbeforethe date Ioriginally inputinto Quicken.That's when the data was corrupted. I then restored from a backup and tried again with just using from the 6th of November to present. That one worked fine.

Bottom line, I don't recommend importing data from earlier than you have TSP data in Quicken.

Hope this clarifies what happened and doesn't create more confusion.

 

[Rolo]

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I am puzzled. You should be able to import the entire share price history just fine, regardless of when your account was opened. I imported the entire share price history into mine (was one of my goals).

I got the impression that only the most recent date was corrupt when you tried it initially; is that correct?

Oh, yeah!I just remembered one thing: A few weeks ago, my import (a regualar update, only a few days) didn't work right. Somehow that day's updates were corrupt in the site's database and I had to delete them and refresh them. Perhaps that was the same day you updated yours...what flukish timing.

If yer up to it, you can download prices from the beginning (leave it blank) to Nov 5th and import them, just select the dates, download and import the file. Editing should not be necessary.

 

[Copperhead]

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Got it to work but I had to do two things different than before. First, I saved the file with a .csv extension instead of .txt. Second, I used Excel to open the file and reorder the dates from oldest to newest. From there, the update was seemless but still only showed the performance of the funds starting at the date I input as the date purchased. No issue, at least I can track it from here instead of updating manually.

 

[Rolo]

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Copperhead wrote:

only showed the performance of the funds starting at the date I input as the date purchased.

Oooooooh! Yeah, its reporting your return, not the fund's actual performance.

 

[Boots]

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Office 2003 users have the ability to do a web query for data like this, and it's very quick and efficient. One problem I'm having is I can't get the data for any custom selected dates. The query won't recognize drop down selections I guess. I don't know if you can refresh the data with the query without it deleting older data then what the query comes up with.

There may not be any practical application as far as where Rolo's script goes, but I find it an easy way to make some simple data comparison calculations using excel without having to hand type any of the data. I just wish I knew how to do more with it.