µFunds
µFunds makes you able to use the muFunds function in any cell within your spreadsheet. This function will return the asked value based on three arguments, so you can call it as
=muFunds(option, id, source) (if you use a period as decimal separator)
=muFunds(option; id; source) (if you use a comma as decimal separator)
where option is a valid returned data option, id is an asset identifier (e.g. ISIN, ticker or Morningstar ID) and source is an identifier for the data source where you want to get the data from.
This function call will return the latest information available from the chosen source. Most of these sources don't offer historical values, which makes comparisons and backtesting difficult. If interested, you can consider saving a history of daily data to your own spreadsheet using a Google Apps Script function and a time-driven trigger (link to guide).
option)nav: Net Asset Value (NAV) or price.
change: Last NAV/price change.
currency: Asset currency, in 3-letter code.
date: Last NAV/price date.
expenses: Total Expenses Ratio (TER).
category: Fund category according to the source.
id)µFunds can track several types of assets, including mutual funds, stocks, pension plans, bonds, ETFs... that can be identified by different names or tickers at the same time, depending on the context or source.
An asset identifier can be used directly, without defining it anyway. However, it is important to use a proper identifier for an asset, but especially for a given information source. For that reason, we recommend checking the Compatibility list of assets, sources and identifiers.
ISIN (International Securities Identification Number)
The ISIN is a 12-character alphanumeric code used for unique identification of a security, as a result of normalizing its assigned national identifier. Its first two characters represent the issuing country, followed by nine alpha-numeric characters (the National Securities Identifying Number or NSIN) and one numerical check digit.
Most securities (equities, debt, entitlements, derivatives...) are identified by a ISIN, which makes a standard asset identifier and the most used for identifying assets in µFunds.
Morningstar ID (non-official name)
Apart from standard codes that identify certain assets, in most countries Morningstar uses an internal code to identify each tracked asset, which we will call Morningstar ID. This information can be really useful for certain assets that cannot be found in Morningstar by any other code (e.g. pension plans).
In this case, you can obtain this ID by searching an asset in Morningstar (preferably European versions) and extracting it as the id query parameter of the asset's page URL. For example, the Morningstar ID for the Vanguard Total Stock ETF (American ETF) is 0P00002DAJ, or for the azValor Global Value PP (Spanish pension plan) is F00000XL5T.
When using a Morningstar country-specific source, an automatic translation from ISIN or other standard identifier to Morningstar ID is performed, since Morningstar country pages only work with Morningstar IDs.
Country or market ticker
Certain assets can be identified through a ticker in their market. To avoid coincidences between tickers from different markets, some sources use prefixes for every market (see the Compatibility list). However, other sources (e.g. Morningstar) don't, making preferrable to identify assets via another identifier (ISIN or Morningstar ID) in these cases.
APIR (for Australia and New Zealand)
The APIR code is universal across the Australian wealth management industry, being used by all the distribution platforms, custodians and fund administrators.
DGS code (for Spain)
The DGS code is a specific identifier for pension plans and unit-linked assets in Spain, given by the Directorate General for Insurance and Pensions Funds (Dirección General de Seguros y Fondos de Pensiones).
source)Although µFunds was originally designed to import data from Morningstar, now it is compatible with other information sources that potentially offer more updated or reliable data in certain cases. This is performed, as of now, via HTML parsing.
If no source is defined, then the asked information will be loaded from Morningstar in generic mode.
Morningstar generic mode (morningstar)
This source relies on Morningstar screener pages, that happen to be the easiest way to get information from an asset, regardless of the used identifier, as they work with ISINs, mutual fund tickers, ETF tickers, Morningstar IDs, etc.
Morningstar screener info is not a user-friendly interface and therefore loading times are faster. Furthermore, no country needs to be chosen and no translation from standard identifiers to Morningstar IDs is required. On the other hand, expenses data is usually not available and sometimes data is provided in a different currency of the asset's, is provided incorrectly or is not provided at all. In these cases, Morningstar country-specific mode should be used.
Morningstar country pages (morningstar-**)
µFunds visits Morningstar snapshot pages and simulates the human behavior when checking for the data manually in a Morningstar website for a certain country. All attributes are up-to-date and reliable, including expense ratios, as the information is the one provided directly to Morningstar's visitors.
The ** represents a country code from the list below in which the given asset is available for sale. In most cases, you can just use the country you live in. For example, data for mutual funds from Luxembourg is available in most European Morningstar pages.
Compatible countries:
morningstar-au)
morningstar-at)
morningstar-be)
morningstar-dk)
morningstar-fi)
morningstar-fr)
morningstar-de)
morningstar-is)
morningstar-ie)
morningstar-it)
morningstar-no)
morningstar-nl)
morningstar-pt)
morningstar-za)
morningstar-es)
morningstar-ch)
morningstar-uk or morningstar-gb)
quefondos)Check out our Google Sheets spreadsheet samples that use µFunds in different scenarios: a single asset, multiple mutual funds or a combination of funds and stocks with info from Google Finance.