Import guides / Fidelity
Fidelity exports cleanly, with one wrinkle worth knowing before you start: you can download a year at a time, and it keeps five years. So a long-held account is five downloads rather than one — tedious once, and then never again.
Export your transaction history
Start here rather than with the positions file. A list of holdings tells FolioBright what you own today; the transaction history tells it what you paid and when, which is what real cost basis, time-weighted return and money-weighted return are built from.
- Sign in at fidelity.com.
- Open Accounts & Trade, then Portfolio.
- Click Activity & Orders, then the History tab.
- Set the time period. A single download covers up to a year, and Fidelity holds five years of history.
- Click Download and choose CSV.
- Repeat once per year until you reach your first purchase, or the five-year limit — whichever comes first.
Export your current positions
Optional, and useful mainly as a check: import the transactions first, then compare the share counts FolioBright shows against this file to confirm nothing was missed.
- From Accounts & Trade → Portfolio, open the Positions tab.
- Switch on Full View before downloading, so cost basis and gain/loss columns are included rather than hidden.
- Click the download icon above the positions list and choose the spreadsheet or CSV option.
- Choose all accounts, or just the one you are importing.
What FolioBright reads
The importer matches your header row automatically, so normally you do not have to think about this. These are the columns it looks for in a Fidelity export.
| Column in your export | What FolioBright does with it |
|---|---|
Run Date | the date of the transaction — what every return calculation is anchored to |
Action | buy, sell, dividend, split, fee; also where Fidelity hides option contract details |
Symbol | the ticker, matched against live market data |
Quantity | shares or contracts, negative on sales |
Price ($) | execution price per share |
Amount ($) | the cash that actually moved, used to reconcile the position |
Things it handles for you
Fidelity's export has a few habits that trip up simpler importers, and FolioBright already knows about them.
Options live in the description, not the symbol. A Fidelity row for a call reads something like CALL (TSLA) TESLA INC JAN 16 26 $1300 (100 SHS) while the symbol column holds little more than the underlying. FolioBright parses the contract out of that text — strike, expiry, and whether it is a call or a put — instead of booking it as a hundred shares of stock.
Splits arrive as DISTRIBUTION rows. Fidelity reports a split as a share quantity with no cash amount attached, which naive importers read as a free purchase. FolioBright treats it as the share adjustment it is, so your cost basis per share moves and your return does not jump.
Opening and closing language. Fidelity writes OPENING TRANSACTION and CLOSING TRANSACTION where other brokers write buy-to-open and sell-to-close. Both are understood.
Stock lending income is recognised as income rather than as a mystery deposit, so it counts toward return without inflating what you contributed.
Bringing it into FolioBright
- Open FolioBright and choose the account the file belongs to, or create one with Add account.
- Click Import transactions and drop the CSV in.
- Check the column mapping. FolioBright reads the header row and fills it in for you; the preset for this broker is below if you ever need to set it by hand.
- Review the preview. Anything it could not read is listed separately rather than imported quietly.
- Import. Prices, returns and allocation update as soon as it lands.
Other brokerages
Nothing to install
FolioBright reads the file in your browser and stores the result in your own account. There is no brokerage login to hand over, no read-only credential, and no third-party aggregator sitting between you and your holdings.