youdar / prep-alpaca-trades-for-xero

Tools to help collecting and aggregating trading info for uploading to XERO

Alpaca - XERO transaction uploads

When doing day trading using Alpaca and using XERO for accounting there can
be very many daily transactions. To track profit and loss, for taxes or for general accounting we need to somehow upload all transactions to XERO.

This tools utilizes the monthly statements and JSON trade confirmation files downloaded from Alpaca https://app.alpaca.markets/account/documents to build CSV files that can be imported into XERO.

Consider doing this only at the end of each month.

Data collection:

1. Go to Alpaca https://app.alpaca.markets/account/documents
2. filter for Account statement and download to a folder like Doc YYYY/statements
3. In the place you downloaded this tool to, CD to src directory and create config.py that contains:
   • TRADES_JSON_DIR = '<path to trade confirmation JSON files>
   • DESTINATION_DIR = '<path to output excel files>
4. In the Alpaca documents page, filter for Trade confirmation JSON and
   Download all the files to TRADES_JSON_DIR

Process steps:

1. Create monthly Excel files YYYY-MM Statement.xlsx
   • Run python3 <path to code>/prep_monthly_transaction_xero_csv.py
     This will save excel files to DESTINATION_DIR
2. Adjust Excel files for other transactions
   • Open each month statement PDF and YYYY-MM Statement.xlsx
   • Check the Statement for any Added/Removed funds
   • Check the Statement for Cost and Fees
   • Check the Statement for Dividend
   • Add those to the Excel with the proper account info, see image in the [References](## References) below
3. VERY IMPORTANT: the dates on the JSON might not be exactly as the statements. This is important particularly
   for the start of the year and the end of the year.
   For example I see trades that were made on 12/29/23 showing in Jan 2024.
4. Once the Excel is up-to-date, save it as a CSV file, so the it can be imported to XERO

References

The Excel/CVS files need to look like:

CSV file columns: *Date, *Amount, Payee, Description, Reference, Transaction Type, Account Code, Tax Rate

Account codes need to match your XERO account codes:

• 3110 : Equity - Owner's Capital: Owner's Investment
• 4716 : Revenue - Alpaca Trade Transactions
• 7151 : Expense - Alpaca Trading fees

Installation

• Get the code from GitHub: https://github.com/youdar/prep-alpaca-trades-for-xero
• You need to have python 3.8 or better.
• You can either use git clone the code or download the ZIP file and extract it in the place you want to run it
• In the place you downloaded this tool to, CD to src directory and create config.py that contains:
  • TRADES_JSON_DIR = '<path to trade confirmation JSON files>
  • DESTINATION_DIR = '<path to output excel files>