Investment Transactions Report - no amount shown for DivXfr, BuyXfr, SellXfr
Stuart McPherson
via web
I've only recently discovered the Investment Transactions report. It looks to be potentially very useful to me but for one flaw: if buys, sells and dividends involving a transfer of funds to or from another account are entered as a single transaction ( using DivXfr, BuyXfr, SellXfr) then the transaction appears on the report with a value of 0.00.
Also it's not possible to select the "Security" name in the report parameters. To list the transactions for a specific security it is necessary to use the "Description" field. I have a lot of historic transactions imported from Quicken where the "Description" field is blank for dividends but contains the company name for the associated (but separate) transfer. This results in a negative amount appearing in the Investment Transactions Report.
The scale of the task to re-enter all the historic transactions and transfers separately and change all the description fields so that the security name appears in the description for, and only for, buy, sell and dividend transactions is prohibitive. Is there a better solution?
2 Posted by zeke on 02 Dec, 2011 02:42 AM
Stuart
It sounds like you've come across one of the consequences of the way Moneydance handles these transactions, which is to split them into two, one involving a cash transfer between your investment account and your other cash account, and one involving a purchase (sale) of your security with cash from (to) your investment account. I'm not sure if I follow exactly what you want to do, but making mass changes to Description fields can be accomplished by selecting multiple transactions, right clicking (on a pc) and selecting Batch change>>Description in the popup menu.
3 Posted by Stuart McPherson on 02 Dec, 2011 12:08 PM
Zeke,
Thanks for your prompt response. In the first instance I'm really just trying to understand the logic behind the Investment Transactions report, because it doesn't produce the results I would expect.
Buy, sell and dividend transactions all require the "Security" name to be entered but "Description" isn't a required field. It seems illogical that the report is then driven by the "Description" field.
However, since my original posting I've come across some more anomalies. I found several dividend transactions (Div, not DivXfr) that appeared in the report correctly, with amounts where the "Description" field is blank. Others were missing altogether. The ones that appeared were categorised as "Dividend Income", those that were missing as "Dividend Income:ISA". Moving from the top level category to the subcategory would remove the transaction from the report, moving back to the top level category would reinstate it. That's with the "Description" field blank. With it populated with the company name the transaction appears in the report, regardless of the category.
There is also the original issue, that DivXfr tranactions appear with value 0.00. Could this be because Moneydance is showing the sum of the Dividend (+ve) and the transfer out (-ve) in one line? Transfers in and out aren't really investment transactions and aren't necessarily specific to a single security.
I expected the report to simply list the values of purchases, dividends and sales for a single security or an investment account. That's not what I've got: I don't really know what I do have: can you shed light on my confusion? I'm using MD 2011r2 (803) on Windows XP.
4 Posted by zeke on 05 Dec, 2011 04:38 PM
Stuart
I'm pretty sure your issues all relate to the way MB handles investment transactions. The 0.00 total shown in your transactions is pretty much as you suggest - the transfer in from some other account is positive, the transfer out is negative. Unfortunately I'm not particularly familiar w/ the Investment Transactions report. I haven't found much use for the few investment-related reports in MD. The way it handles investments doesn't really align w/ the structure of my accounts, and the reports related to investment performance are often inaccurate. Fortunately up to this point I haven't really had to do much in terms of analyzing my investments, other than trying to reconcile share balances in mutual fund accounts, which is a really scarifying prospect in MD, but I've been able to put that off so far.
Support Staff 5 Posted by Tom Freeman on 06 Dec, 2011 04:26 PM
Have you looked at the transfer's detailed report. You can edit it to select individual Accounts, categories, and securities.
Tom
6 Posted by Stuart McPherson on 06 Dec, 2011 07:44 PM
Tom, I had a quick look at the Transfers, Detailed report but I don't think it's the answer. That's because a lot of investment transactions don't involve a transfer: for example, dividends received for shares held in an ISA account are retained within the ISA for subsequent re-investment.
Zeke, your remarks about the Investment Performance report worry me. I was looking to use the Investment Transactions report to drill down into the figures appearing in the IP report but the two reports don't reconcile with each other, for the reasons posted above. The IP report seems to be by far the more accurate of the two but it shows only totals for each security with no breakdown of where the figures come from. I am always very wary of figures that I can't check!
The IT report should use the same base data as the IP report, the same selection criteria and the same calculation algorithms. Cleary that's not the case, as the two give different results. Am I wrong to expect the Investment Transactions report to be an itemised version of the Investment Performance report?
Thank you both for your comments.
7 Posted by zeke on 07 Dec, 2011 10:24 AM
Stuart
Here is an example of a discussion describing what I mean by inaccuracies in the investment performance calculations:
http://help.infinitekind.com/discussions/md2010-beta/108-incorrect-...
You can find more discussions by searching the forums. BTW I'm not sure if I follow how one would be an itemized version of the other. The IP report is supposed to calculate ROI, the IT report just appears to list transactions.
Support Staff 8 Posted by Ben Spencer on 26 Dec, 2011 09:50 PM
I have reproduced the behaviour you are seeing with the investment transactions report and filed a bug ticket.
Currently the amount column in the report is the balance change to the investment cash account. Since a buy transfer bypasses the cash account you see 0.00 in this column in the report.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support