This week I purchased the GainsKeeper service. Its an online web-based product, you don't get your own copy of the software, but there is such as version, I'd buy a copy. Anyway, I'm a Datek user, and had 967 trading transactions during 2001. The thought of preparing a Schedule D without automated assistance was just too difficult and time consuming to contemplate, especially with many wash sale computations to deal with.
So on Monday I bit the bullet and paid the $120 or so for a 1000 transaction subscription. Downloading transactions from Datek into GainsKeeper is a 2 step process. WARNING: It is absolutely critical that you go through the transaction file you download from Datek and follow the directions for annotating short sales and cover buys. You MUST do this before importing data in GainsKeeper. I used my 1099B from Datek as a basis for this, but in the process discovered, by going through every order sequence (buy/sell), two errors made by Datek in catagorizing my sales (they missed two Sell Short transactions). Once marking up the transaction file, importing the file into GainsKeeper went quickly.
I later had to go back and adjust some records involving short sales/cover buys that I had missed when marking up the Datek transaction file (my error). Using GainsKeeper to do this was tedious and slow work, you have to delete the transaction on GainsKeeper, then add the transaction back with the corrected information. It took at least an hour to do about 10 of these transactions. So be careful and annotate your Datek file correctly.
I could not figure out how to directly import GainsKeeper data into Turbo Tax. There probably is a way, but I just didn't have the time to figure it out. I created my 2001 Schedule D (for short term capital gains/loses) using GainsKeeper. The process also produces a detailed report for every transaction, and automatically makes adjustments for wash sales. If I had to do this math manually I would have totally screwed it up. So I'm depending on this service to get it right.
Overall, I found GainsKeeper a life saver this tax season. If there are other alternatives I'm open to suggestions. I went with them simply because it was suggested on the Datek website.
John |
