Tradelog downloads directly from my broker IB in a matter of minutes. OK, maybe a few minutes per 1,000 transactions. For the first year, it requires that you enter open positions as of the end of trading on 12/31. I'm usually fairly flat on 12/31 so I had maybe 15-20 positions to enter. Multiple positions in the same underlying with different purchase/sale price/dates etc. could be sped up by copying the lines and then changing relevant details. OTOH, if there had been a lot to enter, I would have downloaded all positions from the date of the first open position, noted the transaction #'s and then cut and deleted all other transactions thereby leaving me with the same open positions - sort of manual deletion Everything is pretty straigtforward if you read the directions (g). Corporate entries were a PITA to get right (tender/merger for different number of shares plus fractional shares plus cash) but the corporate transaction is the headache not the program. My Sched D was over 800 pages long with a ton of wash sale violations since I scale my positions up and down, occasional fllipping from long to short or vice versa. That's a nightmare to keep track of so TL makes sense for me. If you don't have a lot of transactions, or you close entire positions and you don't have wash sales, a simple spreadsheet or some of these lighter weight programs make more sense.
So what if you had no carryover from 09, and I want to import all my trades for this year, can I do that?
To repeat, Tradelog downloads directly from my broker IB in a matter of minutes. OK, maybe a few minutes per 1,000 transactions.
Sorry but I'm not customer support (never used the demo). Try reading the web site or any user documents that come with the DL (if there are any). If that doesn't work, E-mail or call them.