Replying to last part of @GregC post and @khera.sameer post on inconsistent descriptions and using AutoCat. Until TD Ameritrade moved my account to Schwab, I was tracking the Dividend Income in Tiller (just haven’t set up the Schwab account yet.) I was not a frequent trader, so wanted all income, net of ADR fees, to go to Dividends category.
AutoCat had this line to accomplish:
All transactions got categorized as “Dividends” and the full description shows they all had different names coming in:
As mentioned above, I did not frequently trade. So an occasional trade would pop out based on size of transaction. My Bond Redemptions and Buy/Sells were classified as “Investments” to separate that activity in Tiller. I think you could use the AutoCat Account Min/Max columns to classify those as “Trades” or “Investments.”
@GregC mentioned using his validation process on all common transactions. To get that consistency on some common transactions, I use AutoCat’s column C “Description” to automatically rename all these clunky imported descriptions like Kroger, Whataburger, and Chick-Fil-A transactions.
When I filter on Col C for just “wh” I see one Whataburger description in column C. (obviously I need to set up a AutoCat line for Whole Foods, too!)
In Col P on Transactions, the Whataburger full descriptions are varied:
WHATABURGER MOBILE APP XXX-XXX-6749 TX DGCXXX6345
WHATABURGER 358 Q76 BURLESON TX 01165P
WHATABURGER MOBILE APP XXX-XXX-6749 TX DGCXXX0803
WB GIFT CARD LOAD XXXXXX6749 TX
WHATABURGER ONLINE XXXXXX6749 TX
WHATABURGER MOBILE APP XXXXXX6749 TX
Think I’ll set up my Schwab account now and get it started. Was going to try @brettanicus method of just manually updating Schwab monthly … but thinking that TD Account worked well for me then. Thanks for this discussion.