Bulk Orders from Excel

What you can do from Excel

• Place the same set of orders into one or many accounts across different brokers.
• Copy one order across many accounts, with a different quantity per account.
• Share one quantity out across accounts, in whatever proportion you choose.
• Fire all your orders automatically at a set time (for example, right when the market opens).
• Call any AutoTrader API function from your own VBA macros using the modules.

Demo video

The Order Pad

The Order Pad is a ready made workbook that does all of this from one grid.

What you want	How the Order Pad does it
Many orders into many accounts	One row per order. Leave the Account column blank and the row goes to every account you ticked.
One order copied with a different quantity per account	Allocation mode PER ACCOUNT. Each account uses its own quantity.
One order divided across accounts	Allocation mode SPLIT. The quantity is shared out in proportion to Weight, and rounding leftovers go to the first account so the pieces always add back up.
The same quantity everywhere	Allocation mode SAME.
Orders into one named account only	Fill the Account column in on that row.

It reads your orders from an Orders sheet and the target accounts from an Accounts sheet. There is no limit on the number of orders. The tool stops at the first blank row.

It also does what the older tools could not: every order gets a row on a Results sheet with your broker’s order id, the status and the reason.

You can make as many copies of the workbook as you like. Many users keep one copy per strategy. These are normal Excel files, so you can do a lot of automation to auto-fill the order data using Excel formulae or Excel macros.

Basket and multi-leg (option strategy) orders

A basket order is just a group of orders placed together. A multi-leg option strategy (for example, a straddle, a strangle, or a spread) is simply several orders — one per leg.

The Order Pad handles both:

• Enter each order, or each leg, as a row in the orders sheet.
• Place or copy the whole basket into one or many accounts with a single click.
• Fire the whole basket at a set time using the Configuration sheet.

The legs are sent in the order you entered them in the sheet. Each one waits for your broker’s answer before the next is sent, so the sequence is kept.

Timer orders

Put a time on the Configuration sheet and run OrderPadArmTimer. All your orders are placed when that time arrives. This is handy when you want orders entered exactly at market open. The timer uses your computer’s clock, so keep your system time correct.

Write your own macros (VBA)

If you code your strategy in VBA (Excel macros), the modules you import give you all of the AutoTrader API functions. See the code samples in the API reference.

Before you start

The Excel tools talk to AutoTrader Web directly, so there is nothing extra to install. You do need to import three code modules into your workbook once. The full download and setup steps are on the Excel Setup page.