Difference between --schwab-award and --schwab_equity_award_json?

[moguzozcan]

I'm trying to understand what's the difference between these two? Are they basically the same thing in different formats (csv vs json) so one of them are enough?

[ikoz]

same question. The json parser doesn't support 'lapse' events too, which are present in the json.

[vmartinv]

I believe historically there was no official way to export this data from Schwab, so the json method was the only way.
Later on Schwab introduced exporting these transactions to csv, and the parser for that was added.
I think everyone should use the csv, we can keep the json one for backwards compatibility maybe.

[m01]

According to #277, which introduced --schwab_equity_award_json, the different account types have different data formats.

Now you can these days export .csv files out of equity awards as well (in addition to JSON and XML), but the format doesn't seem to match the normal account's .csv export format (based on https://github.com/KapJI/capital-gains-calculator/blob/main/tests/test_data/schwab_transactions.csv); the equity awards .csv files have transactions spread across multiple lines in the CSV etc, which looks brittle (and no, the number of lines a transaction is spread across is not constant, either, but yes, you could probably use a finite state machine to parse it):

Date,	Action,	Symbol,	Description,	Quantity,	FeesAndCommissions,	DisbursementElection,	Amount,	Type,	Shares,	SalePrice,	SubscriptionDate,	SubscriptionFairMarketValue,	PurchaseDate,	PurchasePrice,	PurchaseFairMarketValue,	DispositionType,	GrantId,	VestDate,	VestFairMarketValue,	GrossProceeds,	AwardDate,	AwardId,
2/1/2020,Sale,ABCD,Share sale,10,$0.50,...
(empty first few columns),then details over which shares came from award A
(empty first few columns),then details over which shares came from award B
...
1/1/2020,Deposit,ABCD,RS,5,lots of empty columns (no $ numbers)
lots of empty columns,then vesting details (incl. $VestFairMarketValue)
...

Personally I think the JSON is a better format to parse for equity awards accounts.