[moneydance] Can MD work with a Schwab account?

[Michael Casteel]

On 10/4/07, Larry Alkoff <labradley at mindspring.com> wrote:
> I've recently setup a Schwab account for a portfolio of mostly stocks
> but have not yet tried to put it into MD.
>
> When I go to the Schwab web page it states that I can download
> information in .CSV format.
>
> Does anyone know how well a Schwab account works with Moneydance?

I find that MD connects directly to Schwab and downloads the
transactions fine. Search the archive of this list for details on how
to set up the direct connect parameters.

Some transactions may not come in as you might wish; for example,
Schwab reports the result of a stock split as a 'shares in'
transaction. You need to replace this with a stock split if you want
the price history graph to look reasonable.

The most aggravating problem in the current version of MD is that
every downloaded Dividend transaction updates the price history for
that security on that date to $10,000/share. This can significantly
distort your portfolio value. You can correct the effect by using the
Stock Quote Synchronizer on the next trading day, to download the
actual share values. However, the bogus high values still make the
stock price history graph pretty much worthless (typically a flat line
near zero with sharp peaks at the date of every dividend) unless you
go in manually and delete those $10,000/share price entries.

Oh, and some Buy transactions in effect deduct the commission amount
twice, calculating a per share price from the amount including
commission, then tacking on the commission as well. At least I think
this was with the latest version; I can't tell when reconciling a
statement and finding this error (which I did in my September
statements) which version of MD downloaded and miscalculated that
transaction. I had to manually update the transactions with the
correct per share price from the statement in order to reconcile.

If you don't have any problematic Buy transactions, it can make it a
real breeze to reconcile the statement if you're into doing that. It's
practically automatic.
-- 
Mike Casteel                                        Seattle, WA