US Banks That Offer Transaction History? 359
wirelessdreamer writes "I use a bank in the US that will only allow me to download transaction history in CSV for the previous three months. I have a hard time remembering to pull my transaction history down every three months, and would gladly jump ship to another bank if there is one that lets me download, say three years' worth of transaction history as one of the standard services. Then I can import my data into MySQL and run some reports on it, which is all I'm looking for." What banks out there do the best job at providing users with simple, downloadable data?
USAA (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't had an account for long enough to test how far back they will let you download but there is no obvious limit.
USAA is pretty awesome in general so I'd recommend it anyway.
OK, so this isn't an answer, but (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't imagine ever being put into this situation of having to download transaction data FROM a bank. I was taught to write down transactions as they happen and check the bank every month. Over the years I have caught them in several minor errors. I've had several hundred dollars of transactions that never posted, and even a deposit erroneously posted to my account. I rarely attempt to correct these errors on the theory that it would cost us both more to reconcile them than I got in "free" services. (What was with that Las Vegas trip, anyway?) But I did pursue that bad $300 deposit. I did a little invasion of privacy thing, found out who it was, google-earthed his address seeing it was no mansion and thought he might need that $300. It took forever to get through to a real person, but she bird-dogged it thru and got the guy's money back to him.
Today I have several years worth of transactions stored locally and backed up five ways against Sunday all reconciled against the bank records to no more than a month behind.
Banking adverts, anyone??? (Score:2, Interesting)
WTF???????
Re:That's the wrong question (Score:2, Interesting)
because nothing could possibly go wrong putting your banking login credentials in something a script can access.
Of course microsoft money, quicken, etc do that so I guess it's not considered bad after all.
Microsoft money, quicken...those are windows programs. I can see why you'd think storing login credentials is a bad idea.
I actually have a cron job that uses CURL to connect to my bank, figure out which question they ask for their multi-factor authentication, login, and download the last 30 days of account history. I sleep quite well at night knowing that it's running from my linux server that only has SSH access.
Re:Try your Credit Union (Score:2, Interesting)
I second this idea. Not only are you supporting a locally owned business, but they're also supporting other locally owned businesses. And as a member, you can often get good rates for loans. Also, they're not responsible for all the financial woes in the USA. Well, OK, that last part is speculation, but it does sound good...
PNC is good, Schwab isn't bad, USBank sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You might have to pay to get the records (Score:4, Interesting)
Given that overdraft and other such fees are a substantial part of a bank's income, you'd think they would consider such accounts to be "high net worth" ... for the bank's own net worth that is, and provide them good service for things like transaction reports.
Oh wait ... if they provided transaction reports, many of these account holders would not be overdrawing. N/M
I don't like banks either (particularly because of the fractional reserve system) but I don't understand your viewpoint here. I'll provide background information to explain.
I keep my own transaction records. Banks are run by humans who can and do make mistakes despite the best of intentions; with no records of my own I'd have a really hard time disputing such a mistake. That's one reason. Another reason is that no one cares about managing my money as much as I do, nor would it be reasonable to expect otherwise. A third reason is that I don't like to needlessly be dependent on someone else to provide important information that can directly impact my life when it's something I can easily take care of myself.
Incidentally, I refuse to carry a debit card and instead I use credit cards as charge cards. They are a bad way to get a loan but they are a wonderful form of payment. The bottom line is that this greatly simplifies my checking account statements from my bank, making my record-keeping trivial.
Now to the main point. There is one and only one event that can possibly cause an overdraft: spending more money than you have placed in your account. How is that the fault of the bank? Why is it their job to make sure you are responsible and do not financially overextend yourself? Is it a problem for you that a fee is attached to an event that shouldn't happen in the first place?
I would not be shocked or amazed in the slightest, no not even a bit, to learn that the people who can't be bothered to keep their own records are the same people who create most overdrafts. They clearly think managing their money is someone else's job. That might leave them open to problems that more responsible adults would have foreseen and been able to prevent or at least mitigate. To me that is simple cause-and-effect and nothing more.
To reiterate, I don't like banks. It'd be petty to let that bias my reasoning, though in this case that isn't even a temptation. Do you know why? Because there's something I like even less than banks, and that's the decline of personal responsibility and the whole victim mentality that is rooted in it.
Re:Try your Credit Union (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll give a big Fuck You to my former credit union (Educational Systems Employees FCU in DC/MD - http://www.esfcu.org/ [esfcu.org]). I was a member for over 20 years (going back to childhood - my first savings account) but was just given the boot last month after not enrolling in the government re-regulated courtesy pay program.
My parents - members for over 35 years iirc (both teachers for whom the whole CU was built to serve) - also got notices of intent to boot for not enrolling in the courtesy pay program. I've long been dissatisfied with the CU service so I accepted the account closure, but while I have other accounts in other institutions, my parents bank solely with ESE so they ended up raising holy hell to contest the policy.
Big corp, big banking, none of them need to care about us anymore.. and why should they? Just wait us out.. we all die sooner or later while industry keeps on chugging along.
Re:OK, so this isn't an answer, but (Score:1, Interesting)
"But I did pursue that bad $300 deposit. I did a little invasion of privacy thing, found out who it was, google-earthed his address seeing it was no mansion and thought he might need that $300"
So you'd steal someone's money if, by your estimation, they don't need it?
You're kidding right? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's hard to believe that here is Australia, we have superior online banking to that of the US.
Our banks here offer years' worth of historical transaction downloads. I'm with the Commonwealth Bank, they don't even mail me paper statements anymore, I can download every quarterly statement as a PDF file, or CSV, for the past several years.
I can also do searches on transactions, by combination of date, description, whether debit or credit and other things. All my bills can be paid on the bank's site, via our national "BPay" system.
And you're saying that, in the US, banks won't even let you access your own financial data? That should be a legal requirement. But the US does have a fascination with deregulation, so there you go.