Converting from Personal Stock Monitor

November 12, 2012 by Nick

The developers of Personal Stock Monitor (PSM) recently announced that they are ceasing development (link no longer works, as their website has been taken down) of their software.

Personal Stock Monitor Replacement

Although StockMarketEye and PSM have slightly different feature sets, PSM users looking for a replacement investment tracking software may find that StockMarketEye fits their needs.

The biggest question that PSM users will have when migrating to StockMarketEye is: “How can I get my current data from PSM into yours?” There are 2 answers to that question:

1. Migrating Portfolios – StockMarketEye keeps your investment data in what we call Portfolios. PSM calls these accounts. In StockMarketEye, a Portfolio is basically a collection of your investments that typically represents one brokerage account. For this type of data, the best way to transfer the data from PSM into StockMarketEye is by using QIF files. Export the data from PSM into a QIF file, then import that QIF file into StockMarketEye. We’ll explain this in more detail below.

Migrating Watchlists – With StockMarketEye, you can keep lists of stocks that you have your eye on. We call these Watchlists. Stocks in a watchlist don’t have any monetary value associated with them; they are simple lists of ticker symbols. The best way to import this type of data is via StockMarketEye’s CSV import. You can export your PSM watchlists to CSV and then arrange to columns of the CSV file to match those expected by StockMarketEye as described here:Importing Watchlists via CSV files.

Importing PSM Accounts into StockMarketEye

Note that we always suggest running the latest version of StockMarketEye.

Here are the steps to use to export your data from PSM into a QIF file. Note that you’ll need to do this for each account you have in PSM.

1. In PSM, select the account you want to export.

1. Go to the Transactions Register view.

1. Select the transactions you want to export. If you don’t select
  any, all of them will be exported. If you have items in this view that
  are not actual transactions (watchlist entries, etc), then make sure
  that you select just the transactions.

1. Use the menu, File -> Export

1. Select the name of the file where you want to save the data, making
  sure that the filename ends with “.qif”.

Click Ok.

You now should have a QIF file that can be used for export. To do the import in StockMarketEye, follow along with the steps outlined on this page in our User’s Guide:

Import investment data from QIF files

You should note that there are a few pitfalls that you might run into when importing a PSM generated QIF file into StockMarketEye. A few of the users converting from PSM have been kind enough to let us know how their conversion went and we’ve listed a few of their notes and tips below:

Make Trial Runs – You can import the data into StockMarketEye as many times as you like, creating as many portfolios in StockMarketEye as you like. Make changes to the data either in PSM or in the QIF file and then re-do the import. You may need to do this multiple times, depending on how the data looks once it is in StockMarketEye. You can also edit the data directly in StockMarketEye after the import.
Verification of Imported Data – To verify that everything was correctly exported from PSM and imported into StockMarketEye, we suggest that you perform the export/import while the markets are closed. This way you can more easily compare the values you see in PSM with those you get in StockMarketEye.
Quote Servers – In StockMarketEye there is no need to specify country specific quote servers. We handle this transparently. If you want to use Google Finance for quotes, you need to change the ticker symbol to a Google Finance ticker symbol as described on this page.
Stock Splits – Split transactions in the PSM generated QIF file are off by a factor of 10. To fix this, you can either edit the value directly in the QIF file (using a text editor, if you’re familiar with the QIF format), or you can edit the value in StockMarketEye’s Transactions view, then use the menu: Portfolio -> Synchronize Portfolio with Transactions to rebuild your portfolio from the transactions, including the corrected split value.
Date Format for non-US Users – Non-US users may run into problems with transaction dates due to the way PSM writes dates in the QIF file. If you’ve noticed the dates of your imported transactions are wrong (for example: year correct, but month and date are switched), you can try this: In StockMarketEye’s QIF import window, you can choose the Date Format to use. Typically it should be ‘Auto’, but if you know that the format of the dates in the QIF file is the same as one of the other “Date Formats” (such as “dd/MM’yyyy”), you should select the necessary format in the QIF import window. Another option is: In the Windows Control Panel -> Region and Language, set the Short Date to “MM/dd/yy”, apply the change and re-do your export from PSM. You can switch the Short Date back to what it was before, after the export from PSM is complete.
Legacy Ticker Symbols – You may have ticker symbols from PSM that are not recognized by StockMarketEye. You can keep them as is, or delete them in PSM and re-export. If you keep them, StockMarketEye will not be able to get quotes for them, but they don’t harm anything. Non-recognized ticker symbols can actually serve as place-holders for un-quoted items (bonds, preferred stock, etc) as explained in this blog post.
Fee Information Missing – Transaction fee information is not included in the PSM generated QIF file. If you’re using StockMarketEye v3.0 or later, you can add this data afterward in the Transactions view. If you have a significant amount of fee data missing, you might consider trying the CSV export method from PSM (but this may require post-manipulation of the PSM exported CSV file to conform to the format required by StockMarketEye).
Average Cost Basis – StockMarketEye does not yet support the Average Cost method, so if you use this mode in PSM, you should disable it before exporting.
Options – PSM does not seem to include currently held options in the exported QIF file. You will need to add these by hand after the import by following the steps on StockMarketEye’s stock option page.
Tip: Remove Folders in PSM before you export the .QIF file. (By dragging each Ticker above the top-most folder.) Then sorting the PSM “Current Holdings” tab by Symbol gives the same order as SME “Prices” tab sorted by Symbol. This makes it much easier to verify correctness of migration by screen check, printed report or by PSM & SME re-exports.
Tip: For many reasons, PSM users may wish to migrate PSM records even when the holding of a Ticker has been reduced to zero; or the Ticker has been discontinued. The SME “Prices” tab shows non-zero Holdings. But the legacy PSM Tickers can be migrated and visible in the SME “Reports” tab. In order to re-find such legacy items after migration, it is helpful to annotate them in PSM before .QIF export. One method is to prefix each Name in PSM with easily recognized text. I used “PSM: “. (Without the quotes!)