Feature Request: Track TSP Accounts (Quicken for Mac)

[email protected]

Feature Request: Ability to track TSP accounts (like a 401K) or at least track TSP fund daily prices. As of 8/31/2017 there were 5 million TSP users. There are zero investment software programs that track TSP accounts...seems like an opportunity.

NotACPA

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

[email protected]

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

Q could still manually track the daily changes in the fund prices. That's public information. 

Unknown

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

If you enter the symbols for the funds into Quicken, it will track the daily changes in fund prices.

[email protected]

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

I don't see C Fund, I Fund, etc., anywhere in Quicken. 

Unknown

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

I don't know much about the Mac product since I use the Windows one, but there certainly should be a way to manually add the security, and provide the public symbol, so that Quicken can update the price.

Hopefully someone that knows about Quicken Mac will step in and give those details.

The key is that it is in fact "public" like you say it is.  It has to be a publically traded fund to have a symbol that Quicken can update.  If it is some kind of private fund Quicken will not be able to update the price.

[email protected]

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

Hence the request...the funds prices are not listed an exchange, but are public available via the TSP website. 

NotACPA

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

They are all "private funds" that are only available  to TSP fund accounts.

Jim's best bet is to download the prices for his funds to a CSV file, massage the file to meet Q's specifications, and then import the prices into Q.

Unknown

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

I see, I misunderstood your term.  It is is highly unlikely that Quicken Inc will do this because a business can just scrape off prices off of someone's website without permission or even better an API that ensures that the format will not change tomorrow.

But good luck on the suggestion.

[email protected]

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

Fund prices post here for all to see:
https://www.tsp.gov/InvestmentFunds/FundPerformance/index.html

Again, 5 million+ TSP users. I bet there are more than a handful that would love for Quicken to track the prices of these few funds. 

NotACPA

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

They're still not "publicly traded funds".  And that's the requirement for them to be downloaded from Q's Quotes Provider into Q.

Unknown

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

Publicly traded has nothing to do with it.  Your bank account is not publicly traded either but Quicken signs in and pulls down that data.  Let's not be so precise as to veer away from common sense.  Quicken can pull down the data for free.  It chooses not to do so.  It's not in their business model.  End of story.
If TSP is something that you find very important there are other programs that do pull the data down.

NotACPA

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

Go back to my initial reply.  It's up to the Trustees of the TSP funds to sign a contract with Quicken in order for download ability to be available.

Transactions require the contract.  Quotes for the funds require that they be publicly traded.

You're confusing apples and oranges. (Or, as I usually say it: you're confusing oranges and orangutans).

kdbeaz

NotACPA said:

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

They are all "private funds" that are only available  to TSP fund accounts.

Jim's best bet is to download the prices for his funds to a CSV file, massage the file to meet Q's specifications, and then import the prices into Q.

Like Jim, I'd love to see the ability to import TSP prices to Quicken, so I'll let the TSP leadership know as NotACPA suggests. In the mean time, I use the method list above (download CSV, tweak it and import prices) and it works. I'm still working full time, so I only do it a few times a year. It's better than nothing.

NotACPA

I learned that process while my ex-wife was a Federal employee.

markdhamill

NotACPA said:

The Trustees of TSP refuse to sign the contract with Quicken which would allow Q to download from TSP.

Complain to TSP.  Q can do nothing without the signed contract.

Go back to my initial reply.  It's up to the Trustees of the TSP funds to sign a contract with Quicken in order for download ability to be available.

Transactions require the contract.  Quotes for the funds require that they be publicly traded.

You're confusing apples and oranges. (Or, as I usually say it: you're confusing oranges and orangutans).

No contract required. This is public information. A simple screen scraper program that polls the page about 8 PM ET M-F would work. All we need is the closing quote. 

https://www.tsp.gov/InvestmentFunds/FundPerformance/index.html

It's a pain to input these manually. It's an easy thing for Quicken to do and a way to cement loyalty of 5M TSP people with accounts. Create pseudo-stock symbols and tell us what to use for the symbol. So silly this is not a feature!

dr.sulli

Thrift Saving Plan is the company managing the 403b plans for federal employees

JB130JB

Where are we on this feature?

It has nothing to do with TSP granting access because individual account info (ie, number of shares held, bought or sold, dividends,capital gain distributions) is not what we are seeking....so please stop pasting info about signing a contract with TSP Trustees. That's NOT what we're asking for here. Repeat, we are NOT asking for account access, just merely the daily closing price....which is public knowledge, nonproprietary and displayed on numerous third party websites in addition to the TSP public page as well. It#s the same as putting particular stocks on your watch list. One mustn't own or otherwise have a brokerage account to merely download particular stock prices and this is no different.

I used Quicken Windows for years and had no problems simply downloading and updating the daily closing price of TSP funds so it's not that hard!

mikep2k1

Agree with previous comment - we simply need the closing account prices on a daily basis to be downloaded. Most TSP users don’t change funds all that often so we can manually enter our fund rebalancing when needed. We just need the closing prices. My Ameriprise account is fully able to download TSP data, so Quicken should be able to do so as well.

NotACPA

AND, once again, Q won't provide ANY download ability from TSP UNTIL TSP signs the contract with Q/Intuit to allow such.

It simply isn't Q/Intuit's business model to allow download without the signed contract.

SO, this simply aint' gonna happen.

jacobs

Quicken doesn't write code to scrape individual websites for security prices. It gets security prices from a third party-service which provides price quotes for publicly traded securities. Quicken also gets prices by downloading them from the broker. The latter requires them to have a contact with Quicken; the former requires a publicly traded security. In this case, it seems neither exists, and therefore Quicken can't obtain security prices. The path forward is for TSP users to request/pester/lobby TSP to support Quicken.