About downloading investment data info this software.

This page is about getting current online (discount) brokerage investment account information to download into (our) investment and financial plan software

If you're not buying our financial plan software because "it doesn't do downloads from the Internet," then you can cross that off of your list of cons, because our software does all of that too (and even better than others sometimes).

Nobody likes manually inputting all of their account data into investment software, so everyone wants magic software to make all of this automatic. Sorry, but this magic software doesn't exist (yet) for a reasonable price, and if it does, it rarely works right without constant babysitting.

But you can get what you want - which is to do a simple magic thing that results in your online brokerage account values being automatically transferred into our Excel-based investment software.

Here's the deal in a nutshell:

There are many "online discount brokerage houses" these days. The correct technical name for these outfits are "custodians." Their main job is to custody your assets, or safely hold them, and then allow trading. We're going to just call them all "custodians" on this page.

Most every custodian has a download / export feature so investors can put their holdings onto their own computer's hard drive, so they can look at them and work with the data offline.

Most every custodian's download / export feature also has a function that will make the download be in a format that MS Excel can read and deal with.

Every custodian uses a different program and format for doing their downloads. This is why there is no one magic program that automatically does all of this correctly, for everyone, all the time.

So all that needs to be done is to take what your custodians' software spits out as a download in Excel format, and then make that data flow into our investment software, all into their correct places. When is is set up once, then all you have to do is click a magic button and your portfolio that shows up in our asset allocation/net worth software will have the latest dollar amounts (and sometimes even asset class breakdowns). The magic button is just telling it to download using Excel format (usually tab, space, or comma delimited text - AKA CSV).

This is something you can do yourself. However, for some reason, people are too afraid or something to get this running on their own.

So for half of our normal hourly consulting rate ($50 per hour, normal is $100 per hour), we'll get all of this working for you.

All you have to do is:

1) Already have purchased a module that needs this type of data (Asset Allocation Software, Net Worth Software, Integrated Financial Planner, etc.).

2) Already have an online brokerage account with an investment portfolio already set up.

3) Do a download exported in Excel format (tab, space, or comma delimited text - AKA CSV)..

4) Send us the exported/downloaded spreadsheet.

Then we'll make the intermediate Excel spreadsheet that will capture the raw data as it downloads.

Then we'll take your investment software you got from us, and make it automatically talk to the intermediate Excel spreadsheet.

Then when you do the normal download, you just direct it to download into the intermediate Excel spreadsheet (just by telling it what file name to use and which folder to put it into), then when you open our investment software, all of the asset names and values will be there refreshed with current data.

This is what you want - to just do the magic download, open our software, and you're working with current data.

On average, it's about a half-an-hour's to an hour's work to make the intermediate Excel spreadsheet. So on average, it's around $25 to $50 to make it. Then it should work just fine until something changes on the custodian's end.

Basically you feed us a few bucks, and we'll get this working for you.

Sorry, but this process cannot be automated because every custodian uses a different thing / format / exporter / program that ends up making the end result different (and then they change it all the time).

If you already have software that claims to do this task automatically, then you know about all of the problems and maintenance that comes with it, so you know there is no such thing as a magic solution that will always work right.

So once the magic thing is made for a TD Ameritrade account, it won't work with Schwab because the formats are different (and all it takes is one little stupid thing to be in the "wrong place" and the whole thing won't work). So one magic thing cannot be made for every individual investor, or money manager, it has to be custom made for it to always work right for each custodian.

Also, as their systems improve over time, they change their exporting deals periodically, which makes data "not be in the right place," which also makes it "not work." So this is another reason why there is no magic program with a reasonable price tag that will "just do it."

The bottom line is that it's a piece of cake to keep this up and running for anyone with basic Excel skills. If the custodian changes their deal and data moved, then anyone with basic Excel skills can make the change in a few minutes (assuming the initial workbook was working before). But for whatever reason, if you don't want to do it, then just feed us a few bucks and we'll be happy to do it for you.

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· It only takes a few minutes to input data anyway. How long does it take to type a name? You can also link the modules to minimize redundant input (or use the Integrated Financial Planner). Financial software that gets data online is not fast either.

· To have this capability and/or a database of historical data, you'll need to spend around five times as much as our investment software costs. Then they're going to ding you about half of that annually in update fees.

· In addition to spending more on the money management software, there are costs in time, work, and money to keep the online infrastructure working. In larger offices, a full-time person is usually employed to do nothing but maintain these systems. Keeping everything working so it will actually go online and populate client allocations with current holdings, takes over ten hours of work weekly. This is several times the amount of time it takes to manually input client data.

· If you've been doing it like this for the purpose of keeping asset allocation reports updated with fresh data, then you know how many mistakes there are, and how much time it takes to fix them (sometimes you can't even fix them because you can't manually override the online data).

· From the time the reports are finalized to the time they're presented, the values will be off by just as much as if you did it all manually because market values change daily. The only way to keep it fresh is to print it out the day of the client meeting. The time it takes to do all of this rework is several times as much as inputting it all manually in the first place.

· Online databases don't have all of the client's investments, so you always have to manually input things anyway. The only other option is to leave things out (like 401(k)s and real estate). Clients do not want you to do that because you're too lazy to do a few more minutes work.

· Going online to do important work means being vulnerable to the many things that will stop your work. You may not be able to get online and use the program because of your Internet access, computers, or servers being down. Then the vendor's software, computers, or servers could be down, or just slow because too many people are using them. Plus doing things online is just slow even if you have a fast connection.

· Keeping client data online means that other people can know about it. How long will it be before they start sending them junk mail or marketing to them?

When we were working for financial planners in person, we did things both ways for years. After a while, we stopped the whole online thing because it wasn't worth the trouble and the reports we generated with our software added much more value.

The "Holy Grail" of financial planning software or investment software will never happen, regardless of advances in technology. Everybody wants magic software that can read your mind and that eliminates all work, like inputting, by going online and populating software with names, exact perfect current holdings of everything they own, planning input and assumptions, and then spitting out perfect looking reports by just clicking the print icon one time. Forget it - that will never happen!

The tradeoff between ease of use and value will always be there. Our software is not magic like others profess to be, and is not the easiest nor quickest to use, but it provides the most value. To realize value people will pay you for, you're going to do have to do you know what - work!

Experienced users (e.g., paraplanners that do nothing but make plans for salespeople all day) know that having integration for the sake of saving a few seconds here and there by not having to input someone's name twice, is expensive, and usually ends up taking up more time than it saves.

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