Fidelity Transaction Import Policy (Rollup Model)

Scope

This policy defines how Fidelity transaction exports (CSV/XLS/XLSX) should be interpreted when generating monthly rollups for GnuCash.

The goal is to produce clean macro-level accounting entries while ignoring internal trade activity.

The system assumes the statements (PDF) define the authoritative portfolio value.
Transaction exports are used only to identify true cash flows.

1. Trades MUST be ignored

Most rows in Fidelity exports represent the cash leg of a trade, not an actual movement of money.

These must never be treated as deposits, withdrawals, or fees.

Ignore rows where the action or description contains:

YOU BOUGHT
YOU SOLD
REINVEST
REINVESTMENT
DIVIDEND REINVEST
DIV REINV
DISTRIBUTION (when tied to a security name)
SPLIT
SPIN-OFF
MERGER
TENDER
CALL
ASSIGNMENT
EXCHANGE

Examples:

YOU SOLD NVIDIA CORPORATION COM
YOU BOUGHT FIDELITY GOVERNMENT MONEY MARKET
DIVIDEND REINVESTMENT

Reason:

These are internal portfolio transactions already embedded in the begin/end portfolio values.

2. Money market sweeps MUST be ignored

Fidelity frequently sweeps cash into and out of the money market.

Examples:

YOU BOUGHT FIDELITY GOVERNMENT MONEY MARKET
YOU SOLD FIDELITY GOVERNMENT MONEY MARKET
CASH YOU BOUGHT

These are not deposits, withdrawals, or fees and must be ignored.

3. ACAT transfers are not income or contributions

Rows containing:

ACAT
TRANSFER OF ASSETS
ACAT RECEIVE
ACAT DELIVER

represent a transfer of securities between brokers.

These should not create income, expense, or equity entries.

If the external broker is not tracked in GnuCash, ignore ACAT rows entirely.

4. Only three transaction categories are allowed

All remaining rows must map into exactly one of these categories.

4.1 External Deposits

Map to:

Equity:Contributions

Examples:

CONTRIBUTION
DEPOSIT
TRANSFER IN
DIRECT DEPOSIT
ROLLOVER CONTRIBUTION
EFT RECEIVED

These represent real money entering Fidelity from outside.

4.2 External Withdrawals

Map to:

Equity:Withdrawals

Examples:

WITHDRAWAL
TRANSFER OUT
CHECK
DEBIT
PAYMENT
EFT PAID
ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER PAID

These represent money leaving Fidelity.

4.3 Fees

Map to:

Expenses:Investment Fees

Examples:

ADVISORY FEE
MANAGEMENT FEE
ACCOUNT SERVICE FEE
WIRE FEE
MARGIN INTEREST

Fees should generally be small relative to account value.

5. Dividends and Interest

Dividends and interest are typically more reliable in statements, but when detected in transaction exports:

Map to:

Income:Dividends
Income:Interest

6. Market Change must be calculated from balances

Investment performance must never be inferred from trade cash flows.

Instead compute:

MarketChange =
  EndingValue
- BeginningValue
- Deposits
- Withdrawals
- Dividends
- Interest
+ Fees
+ Taxes

Where BeginningValue and EndingValue come from statements.

7. Sanity checks (critical)

Any automated system must flag these anomalies.

Fee sanity

Monthly fees greater than:

$10,000

are almost certainly misclassified trades.

Deposit / withdrawal sanity

Large deposits or withdrawals that correspond to:

YOU SOLD
YOU BOUGHT

indicate trade cash was incorrectly classified.

Market change sanity

If:

MarketChange ≈ Portfolio Value

then the script likely parsed:

BeginningBalance = 0

incorrectly.

8. Priority order of data sources

When generating accounting rollups:

  1. Statement PDFs (authoritative)
    • Beginning value\
    • Ending value\
    • Change in investment value
  2. Transaction exports
    Used only to identify:
    • deposits
    • withdrawals
    • fees
  3. Trades
    Ignored.

9. Expected result

Correct implementation should produce:

  • Clean monthly journal entries
  • No million-dollar “fees”
  • Market change matching statement performance
  • Assets matching Fidelity statement totals