Personal Stock Monitor supports importing entire stock market portfolios from specially formatted Comma-Separated Values files also known as CSV files. This can be an effective means of moving existing portfolios from other software, sites or spreadsheets into PSM.

We recommend using a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc, to create the CSV files.

When importing transactions, Personal Stock Monitor will expect the the first row to contain the names of the columns. These are:

• Date - the date of the transaction in MM/DD/YYYY format
  
• Symbol - the ticker symbol for the security. See below.
  
• Type - the type of transactions. See below.
  
• Shares - the number of shares or contracts represented by this transaction.
  
• Price - the price or dollar amount. See below.
  
• Commission - the trading commission or brokerage fee.
  
• Fee - misc fees.
  
• Notes - any notes you would like to include.
  

These column names must be included exactly as they are written above, including capitalization. Not all transaction types fill in all columns. For instance, in the case of a cash Deposit transaction, only the Symbol and Price columns are filled in, where the symbol should be "cash".

Ticker Symbol

So that Personal Stock Monitor can get quotes for a given security, the correct ticker symbol needs to be included for that security in the Symbol column. What complicates this is that different stock market data providers use slightly different ticker symbol naming conventions.

When in doubt about a particular ticker symbol, you can use the Find Ticker By Name tool available from the Account -> Find Ticker By Name menu option in Personal Stock Monitor:

Enter the name of the security in the Find Name box and press Start Lookup. The ticker symbol will be listed in the Symbol column.

Transaction Type

Personal Stock Monitor includes a transaction register that supports all the common types of stock market transactions investors encounter. The values entered into the Type column in the spreadsheet must match the names used in the software. The type names used must match what's displayed in the software exactly. The transaction types supported are:

• Buy  - Normal purchase transaction.
• Sell - Normal sale transaction.
• Sell Short - Short sale transaction.
• Buy to Cover - Buy to cover a short sale.
• Split - Stock split or reverse split.
• Dividend - Cash dividend; Can also be money market account dividend.
• Reinvest Div - Dividend reinvested for stock.
• Transfer In - Transfer of shares into the account from an outside source.
• Transfer Out - Transfer of shares out of the account.
• MiscExpense - Miscellaneous expense or account maintenance charges.
• MiscIncome - Miscellaneous income.
• Deposit - Cash deposit.
• Withdraw - Cash withdrawal.
• Interest - Cash interest.
• Margin Int - Margin interest charges paid on a margin account balance.
• Return of Capital - Return of Capital
• Buy to Open - Buy options to establish a long position
• Sell to Close - Sell options to close out a long position.
• Sell to Open - Sell options to establish a short position.
• Buy to Close - Buy options to close out a short position.
  

Price

The Price column has a dual meaning depending on the type of transactions. In most cases, Price means the price of the security or option, but in the case of cash transactions the Price column represents the total cash involved. For instance, in the case of a Deposit transaction, Price represents the total money deposited.

Creating a Spreadsheet

Set up your spreadsheet as shown in the image below. The first row should include all the column names from the list above. The order is not important.

Each transaction is listed on it's own row. Again, the ticker symbol must be valid for the stock market data provider you are using. The transaction type must match the name used in Personal Stock Monitor exactly.

Once you have set up your spreadsheet, you can save it out as a Comma Separate Values file from the File->Save As menu item in Excel:

From the Save As dialog select Save In "My Documents", enter a file name such as "transactions" that you will remember and select Save as Type "CSV (comma delimited).

You will likely get a warning message from Excel that resembles:

Just click yes and then close Excel.

Open Personal Stock Montor and select the Accounts -> New Account Tab menu item:

This will bring up the New Account Tab wizard. Check the circle next to the Import transactions from a CSV file option. Click next.

On the next screen give your new account tab a descriptive name and then click browse:

Select the transactions CSV file you exported from Excel above:

Click Open and then click Next in the wizard. If your transactions included a cash deposit you will now be done, otherwise you will be presented the Set Cash Balance screen:

Set the cash balance and as of date for your account and click next.

Click Finished. You should now see your transactions in Personal Stock Monitor:

If you ran into any problems such as including an invalid transaction type or column header you can simply delete the create tab, fix the problem and try again.

If you have a lot of transactions in some other software or website, we would very much like to hear about it. Please register for an account here and leave a comment to this article or post in the forum.