E*Trade Financial Import Instructions

E*TRADE Financial

PLEASE NOTE: 
In previous versions of their year end Excel file and transaction history reports, Etrade Financial used option symbols for option trades rather than complete option descriptions. However, in the most recent update, Etrade seems to be trying to provide the additional detail necessary so that options can be fully described in TradeLog long format. (ie: "MSFT JAN07 40 CALL") 

Therefore, when manually entering your open option positions from last tax year, you must enter them using the proper long hand format so that TradeLog can properly match them with the closing positions upon import.  Also, if you used TradeLog for the previous tax year and have open positions going into the current year you will have to convert any options which are recorded using option symbols to the TradeLog long hand format.

There are now 3 methods of import:

brokerConnect™ Import

General Procedure:

Note: This report does not include option expirations, so after importing option trades you should click the Open button on the toolbar and the click the Expire Options button to expire these manually.

1.  Run TradeLog and click on the Etrade Imp button.

2.  A popup dialog box will ask you to select your import method.
     Select brokerConnect and click OK.

Please note that this dialog box will only popup if you selected "Select each time" as your default import method from Options, Import Filters. You can make brokerConnect your default import method to save one keystroke when importing.

3.  A popup dialog box allows you to enter your
User Name, Password, and Account Number. 

Please make sure you enter a dash in your account number!

The From date pick box shows the from date that will be used for this import. You can use the default date or if you want to import a specific day or you can select the first of the month date from the drop down calendar fro a specific month.

The To date pick box allows you to select your own end date for a custom date range import. The maximum date range is 13 months.

If you are a really active trader, please select 1 Month to import one month at a time. 

Clicking on the Timeout button allows you to increase the time TradeLog will wait for a response. This may be necessary if you have a slow internet connection or large amounts of data.  You may also have to reduce the date range as well and import in smaller chucks.

This information gets encrypted and is stored in your TradeLog data file.  It only needs to be entered once for each brokerage account.

The next time you click the Etrade Imp button your information will be displayed in the box and you simply click the OK button to continue.

4.  Click OK and TradeLog will connect to the Etrade web site to get your most current trade information. TradeLog will automatically login to your account. 

Please do not click any keys while TradeLog gets your data!

5.  Your trades will be automatically imported and matched.


NOTE: It seems that for some Etrade accounts getting an entire tax year results in no records returned. In this case please import one month at a time.

Download an Entire Year

General Procedure:

Note: Although this report includes option expiration and assignment records, there is no indication as to whether these are a sale or purchase and therefore cannot be imported into TradeLog. So after importing option trades you should click the Open button on the toolbar and the click the Expire Options button to expire these manually.

1.  Go to the E*TRADE website, log into your account,
     and click on the Accounts tab
     and then click on the Account Records tab.
    


 

2. Select Tax Reports


 

3. Click on the Tax Records tab and then
    click on Export your 200X trades into Microsoft Excel

 
   

4.  A pop up dialog box will appear


 

5.  A File Download dialog box will also appear in another window
     - note the name of the file and click the Save button.

NOTE: If the above File Download dialog box does not appear and the Excel sheet opens in your web browser window, then you may have a problem with your Windows File Extensions. Click here for instructions on how to fix this.
 

6. A Save As dialog box will appear - click the Save button.
 - make sure you save this to your "my_documents\tradeLog\import" folder on your hard drive.

NOTE:  You may open the file with Excel if you wish, but it is not necessary for importing into TradeLog.  But please do NOT save it using Excel as doing so will change the formatting from plain text to binary which cannot be read by TradeLog. 

7.  Run TradeLog

8.  Click on the ETrade Imp toolbar button.

9.  Click NO to import from the ETrade Excel file

10.  An E*TRADE Import dialog box appears.
Select the appropriate csv file and click the "Open" button.

11.  All of your trades will be automatically imported and matched.

 

NOTE: ETrade cancelled and corrected trades:

The ETrade yearly transactions report is not always consistent in how they report cancelled or corrected trades.  TradeLog does it's best to try to match these and delete them upon import, but sometimes this simply cannot be done automatically.

When this happens we leave the decision making process up to the user by flagging these transaction with an "X" in the TradeLog open/close column.

You must then decide the following for each transaction marked with an X:

  1. If this transaction is canceling other buy or sell transaction and therefore both the trade marked with an X as well as the matching trade should be deleted.
  2. Or whether this transaction has no match and should simply be deleted.
  3. Or whether this is a corrections trade and should be imported as a valid buy or sell. If so you should change the X in the open/close column to an O or C.
  4. Or whether this is a valid sale transaction where the price is so low that the commission causes the amount to be negative rather than positive. If so you should change the X in the open/close column to an O or C.

Import from Transaction History

General Procedure:

1.  Go to the E*TRADE website, log into your account,
     and click on the Trading & Portfolios tab
     and then click on the Transaction History tab.
 

2.  Click on the Transactions tab,
     select your Brokerage account,
     and then click the Search Transactions button

3.  Select All Trades from the drop down Type box,
     Then enter a Date Range and click the GO button

    Your report should be displayed as follows:


 

4.  Select the entire report using your web browser's Edit, Select All
(Ctrl-A keyboard shortcut) command.  

Then Copy the selected report using your web browser's Edit, Copy
(Ctrl-C keyboard shortcut) command.

(You may also use your right mouse click Select All command
followed by the right mouse click Copy command).

The data is now on the Windows clipboard
(an imaginary storage location for copied windows data).
 

5.  Run TradeLog.
 

6.  Click the ETrade Imp toolbar button.
     Click YES to import from the ETrade Trade Confirmation (Trade History) report

7.  Your trades will be automatically imported and matched.

PLEASE NOTE: Since some options were reported with the underlying stock description rather than a stock ticker symbol, TradeLog will prompt you to look up the ticker symbol via the web. Sometimes the description will result in multiple companies which match or partially match the description. A popup selection box will allow you to select the proper underlying stock ticker symbol, or the enter it yourself.

It looks like Etrade may be moving to providing the underlying stock ticker symbol in it's most recent transaction history format update. If the underlying stock ticker symbol is provided, Tradelog will use this instead.