How does MD determine "new" investment transactions when downloading?
Hi. As a result of my separate question in this thread (https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/discussions/online-banking/25335-schwab-download-duplication-reinvested-dividend-comes-across-as-miscinc-buy-and-not-divreinvest) I've chosen to effectively combine two download transactions (MiscInc + Buy) into a single DivReinvest transaction whenever the situation arises.
The problem I'm seeing with that decision (treats me right I suppose) is MD keeps re-downloading the one transaction I delete. For example, if delete the original MiscInc transaction and then turn the Buy into a DivReinvest... then the next time I download I get the MiscInc transaction again.
I'm inferring that it has to do somethign with the transaction IDs (?).
1) How does MD determine what's a new transaction? I infer that it doesn't solely look for anything since the last download date (otherwise I wouldn't be having this problem).
2) How long (?) would MD keep re-downloading that transaction that I manually delete? I've done the "change two transactions into one DivReinvest" for a few weeks now... but the only transactions that keep re-downloading are for the most recent set of MiscInc + Buy transactions (and not all of the prior sets of such pairs of transactions).
Does it keep downloading until ~ +1 week, or until there's a newer transaction, or ????
P.S. It's interesting look at the actual transaction data that's downloaded and available via right click (call me a nerd). Is there a data dictionary or schema somewhere that explains what each field means? Some of it is obvious and some of it is not.
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1 Posted by dwg on 31 Jan, 2023 01:43 AM
You are talking about Schwab which means you are using Moneydance+ and hence Plaid.
Plaid use its own API so you would have to look on the Plaid site for documentation. I envisage the documentation would answer most of your questions, I do not know if any of the users here have looked at is as they have QIF and OFX.
2 Posted by gbonawitz on 01 Feb, 2023 01:50 AM
Hi dwg. I had initially thought as much... but when I went to their API website and look at sample responses (e.g. https://plaid.com/docs/transactions/transactions-data/#pending-and-posted-transactions) there's a difference in how Plaid v. MD shows data (if I'm looking at the right stuff).
For example: via the Plaid API the data is in a easily human-readable "name: value" format, e.g.
"transaction_id": "lPNjeW1nR6CDn5okmGQ6hEpMo4lLNoSrzqDje",
"pending_transaction_id": "BxBXxLj1m4HMXBm9WZZmCWVbPjX16EHwv99vp",
"pending": false,
"name": "Apple Store",
"amount": 2307.21
When I look at some right-click data in MD I see stuff like this:
0.acctid: 88c1af08-299f-44d5-b349-54755b95e9b1
0.desc: Sonic Drive-In
0.id: fb6eb29a-b9bc-4ee5-b1e8-157fce1483ba
0.obj_type:
0.oldid: -1
0.pamt: -1600
0.samt: 1600
0.tags:
acctid: c0b3a97c-443c-4eed-b09e-b7fde6a9fa80
chk:
desc: Sonic Drive-In
dt: 20230128
dtentered: 1675087478151
Overall this is more an intellectual question (and not a bug), and if anyone has a quick answer great if not I'm not going to lose sleep :-)
3 Posted by dtd on 01 Feb, 2023 03:16 AM
just a user - the "key" to your question is in a few fields, but I tend to call it fitxnid:
"fi_id" = "mdplus:KzeQ81Xwe0TyZoV9Y6amuONrBPnMXZHQLo6ZL"
"fitxnid" = "JzeyYDVdevT3kpDNnykvSdPwkojRKkC0mvvBb"
With OFX it was a bit simpler, as MD+ has a similar (but different) id. I grabbed a "right click" transaction and see basically two sets of these ids with slightly different names.
fitxnid is basically the secret sauce that says - yep, you've downloaded this item, and can skip it when you download it again.
So when you delete one of those two items, MD says "oh, wait, xyzzyplughplover isn't a fitxnid I see - this must be NEW - and boom, you see it downloaded politely for you, even though you intended it to stay gone. The other item you edited isn't redownloaded, because its fitxnid is still there.
How long? Schwab is odd in that it can retain 6-18 months of data depending on the account type. So, it can be a very long time. That said, MD's "last download date" can, but doesn't always, say not to look at anything before a certain date, but I've tended to ignore that.
What I do, is instead of deleting the unnecessary item (yes, I've done things like this) is to just zero it out and let it sit. I eventually delete it, after a bit of time, and then it is just cleanup, and by then it isn't around anymore to be redownloaded (I cleaned up [deleted] about 10 items from 2021 and 2022 as I started doing my taxes - not really necessary, since the value is zero, but I do it anyway)
Hope that helps.
4 Posted by Greg Bonawitz on 01 Feb, 2023 03:21 AM
I like the 0-ing it out idea and will try that!
Thx