A Word About Input Formats - Use OFX When You Can
OFX is a machine format. CSV is primarily a human format. Guess which one works better for dependable, automatable imports? If your institution offers both (and several do), you will almost always be better off picking OFX. Here are some benefits:
- Auto generate balance assertions from balance data in OFX. This alone should make you always pick ofx where available
- Format is more stable, less subject to arbitrary change by the institution
- You don’t have to worry about encoding
- A single OFX file can contain multiple accounts. Saves effort when you have to download these manually, and hold several accounts in an institution
- price entries: many brokerages include ticker prices of all active tickers in the account on the date of download, in addition to of course, the prices gleaned from transactions. These are especially critical for some employer owned retirement accounts which may have private funds for which these OFXs are the only easily automated price source
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