Managing your imports is a complicated process. Almost all portfolio accounting data comes from custodial import sources, as opposed to manual data entry. In most systems, you lose the provenance of your data once the import has completed. You can't look at a specific transaction or client record and determine which custodian or import file the data came from.
Even if you can figure out where your data came from, what options do you have for fixing problems? You need high-level tools that let you manage blocks of data at the custodian or file level. If you import a bad batch of files, you need some way to back out information globally without going line-by-line through your accounts or having to restore a database backup.
FinFolio gives you a powerful troubleshooting tool called the Import Manager. It shows you every file that has been imported into your database, and what data came from which file. You can see any error files that were created during the import process, as well as view data about specific errors.
You can modify and drill into data items from the import manager, including every major data type, like accounts, clients, securities, prices and activities. If you find a bad file you wish you hadn't imported, you can delete specific data, or you can back out the entire file as if you had never run the import.
You have several advanced troubleshooting tools available, including the ability to see data from the original import file and search on data elements like account number or security symbol.
You can also view any error files created during the import. This shows you things like unmapped transaction codes or unclosed XML tags which indicate your file download wasn't complete.
As with my last post, this is a feature designed primarily for outsourcing shops and other firms like broker/dealers and large advisory shops with thousands of import files across hundreds of advisor databases. The ability to troubleshoot and manage data at the custodian and file level can save hours of work any time there is a data problem.