You can transfer your investment data into StockMarketEye via Comma-separated values (CSV) files. You can create CSV files via most spreadsheet applications such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc.
StockMarketEye reads your investment data from the CSV file, one transaction per line. The table below lists the columns accepted by StockMarketEye. The data contained in each line of the CSV file must meet the specifications described in the “Column Requirements” section below.
NOTE: The order of the columns in the CSV file must be the same as that specified in the table below. See the example file if you are unsure.
NOTE: You may include a “header” line, but it is not required. If the header line is included, the first cell must contain the word “date”.
NOTE: All columns must be present in the CSV file, for each line in the file. Values are mandatory for the columns in bold. Values for the other columns are optionally required, depending on the type of transaction being recorded. See the detail descriptions below for details.
| Transaction Date | Transaction Type | Symbol | Shares | Price/Share | Costs | Amount | Distribution Amount | Shares Affected | Comment | Exchange Rate | Currency | Cash Affected | Name |
You can download an example CSV investment transactions file here.
In your spreadsheet application, the file to import will look something like this:
The following table describes the columns of the CSV file in greater detail.
| Column | Usage | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Transaction Date | Value is mandatory | The date of the transaction. Available date formats are:
This column is mandatory and must always have a value specified. |
| Transaction Type | Value is mandatory | The type of the transaction. Available transaction types are:
This column is mandatory and must always have a value specified. |
| Symbol | Value is mandatory | The symbol connected with this transaction. You must specify a symbol for every transaction unless the transaction type is cash related (CASH IN, CASH OUT, INTEREST IN, INTEREST OUT, OTHER IN, OTHER OUT). If the transaction type is cash related, this column can be empty or can contain the word “Cash”. |
| Shares | Value is optional | The number of shares associated with this transaction. Whole and decimal numbers are accepted. This column is not used when the transaction type is cash related or for DIVIDEND, CAPGAIN or RETURN OF CAPITAL transactions. For SPLIT transactions, this column must contain the split ratio as a decimal number (i.e 2-for-1 split is 2.0). |
| Price/Share | Value is optional | The price per share of this transaction. This column is not used when the transaction type is cash related or for DIVIDEND, CAPGAIN, RETURN OF CAPITAL or SPLIT transactions. |
| Costs | Value is optional | This column specifies any costs (fees or commissions) associated with the transaction. If this column is empty, the costs for this transaction are set to 0. |
| Amount | Value is mandatory for cash transactions. | The amount of the transaction, not including costs. A value in this column is mandatory for CASH IN, CASH OUT, DIVIDEND, RETURN OF CAPITAL, CAPGAIN, INTEREST IN, INTEREST OUT, OTHER IN, and OTHER OUT transactions. This column is not used when the transaction type is SPLIT. For all other transactions, the amount is calculated from the price/share and shares columns. |
| Distribution Amount | Value is optional | The amount of the distribution per share. This column is only used for distribution transactions such as DIVIDEND, CAPGAIN, RETURN OF CAPITAL and their re-investment equivalents. It is for informational purposes and can be left blank. |
| Shares Affected | Value is optional | The number of shares affected by a distribution or SPLIT transaction. This column is for informational purposes and can be left blank. |
| Comment | Value is optional | Any comments you want to remember about this particular transaction, up-to a limit of 2048 characters. This column is optional and can be left blank. |
| Exchange Rate | Value is optional | The exchange rate between the currency of this transaction and the Portfolio’s currency on the date of the transaction. If your transactions and Portfolio are in the same currency, this column can be left blank. |
| Currency | Value is optional | The currency of the transaction. This field can be left blank and will be determined by the import mechanism. |
| Cash Affected | Value is optional | Were the proceeds of this transaction added/deducted from the Portfolio’s cash balance? Can be specified with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (or ‘true’ / ‘false’). If this field is empty, the import function will determine the proper value. |
| Name | Value is optional | The full name of the company whose stock this transaction concerns. If this field is empty, the import function will lookup the proper name. |
Once you have created a CSV file containing your investment transactions, you can import it into StockMarketEye with the following steps.
Open StockMarketEye and use the menu: File -> Import Portfolio -> Import from CSV...
In the “Import CSV Investment Transactions” window, click on the “Browse” button to help select the CSV file containing the investment data that you want to import. Once you have found the file, select it and click OK. The file’s name should now be in the “CSV Investment Transactions File” field.
This data will be imported into a new or existing StockMarketEye portfolio that you select in Step #4.
Once you have entered an existing CSV investment data file, click on the “Next” button to move to the next step.
Map the symbols found in the CSV investment data file to symbols known to StockMarketEye.
Stock (or ticker) symbols often differ between applications. In this step you must convert the stock symbols that were found in the CSV file into symbols known to StockMarketEye.
Before moving to the next step, you must confirm each symbol mapping by checking its box.
If the box is initially checked, it has been mapped automatically by StockMarketEye.
If the box is initially un-checked, there was no direct match to a StockMarketEye symbol. You must use the “Search for the Corresponding Symbol” field to find a matching symbol. You can double-click on one of the search results in the “Select StockMarketEye Symbol” table to the right of the search field in order to use that symbol.
When all of the symbols have been mapped and confirmed, click on the “Next” button to move to the next step.
Finish the import of the investment data by selecting a portfolio into which the data will be added. You can either select an existing portfolio, or create a new one.
Click on the “Finish” button to complete the import.
The investment data has now been imported into the selected portfolio.
