“My brokerage statement will not import properly”
Brokerage exports describe buys, sells, dividends and splits rather than simple debits and credits, and software support for that richer structure is uneven. Files that a bank importer reads as empty are often full of investment activity it was never designed to see.
Symptoms
The import reports zero transactions from a file that clearly has trades Share quantities are missing while cash amounts arrive Dividends import as ordinary deposits with no security attached
What actually causes it
Investment transactions use a different structure
Trades are wrapped in aggregates like BUYSTOCK and SELLSTOCK rather than the bank-style entries most tools look for. A reader that only knows the bank shape finds nothing and honestly reports an empty file.
Securities are not set up yet
A trade references a security by identifier. Where that security does not exist in your file, the trade may be skipped or imported as cash only, losing the share count.
The account type does not support holdings
Importing brokerage activity into an ordinary bank account leaves nowhere to record quantities, so only the money survives.
How to fix it
- Drop the file into the fixer below: it recognises investment statements and reports them as such rather than claiming the file is empty.
- Create the account as a brokerage or investment account before importing, not afterwards.
- Add the securities the file references, or let your software create them during import where it offers to.
- Check share counts as well as cash after importing — cash arriving correctly is not evidence the holdings did.
Related import problems
Skip the manual edit — fix it automatically
The fixer tells you plainly when a file is an investment statement, which stops the "my file is empty" hunt before it starts. Free, no signup, no upload.
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