investments
Rob
via web
I'm living in the UK
I'm considering switching from quicken because they pulled the uk support a long time ago.
I have looked at managing investments on moneydance and I cannot work out how to track a very simple investment.
I have bought shares within an index tracker - ftse all share. All I want to do is enter how many shares I have got and the price paid per share, Then track the share price so I can continuously update the value of my investment. On quicken this was very easy, I just manually updated the share price and I could see if my investment was up or down. However it is not so simple in moneydance. I have looked into tracking it by the ticker symbol but I cant get it to work.
2 Posted by -Kevin N. on 07 Aug, 2011 07:07 PM
Hi Rob,
Look to the Moneydance User Guide. Specifically, Chapter 9 Tracking Your Investments, Sub-Chapter: Adding New Securities.
It explains the 3-step process of adding securities to Moneydance, associating them to your investment account and finally entering your holdings.
HTH -Kevin N.
3 Posted by Scott on 08 Aug, 2011 02:37 AM
I'm having the same problem - I read the documentation, and there appears to be a difference between an Investment Account and a Security, but the documentation does not explain what it is. I'm converting from Quicken 2007 for Mac (a very slow, painful process, because the export/import didn't work), and want to enter a transaction that transfers money from my paycheck to a mutual fund account (is that an Investment Account or a Security?). The money shows up, but the number of shares does not. I've entered the ticker symbol, and would also like to be able to modify the number of shares purchased (because, for example, the shares were not bought on the exact date of my paycheck, so the price per share has changed). This is a fundamental problem, so I must be missing something basic.
4 Posted by Diane on 08 Aug, 2011 02:56 PM
I also am moving from Quicken. I went to the Extensions in the menu and downloaded and extension that automatically updates my investments. I set it to update on Sat. after the markets close for the week. Worked grat.
5 Posted by Brian on 08 Aug, 2011 05:37 PM
Here's my explanation, for what it's worth. An investment account can hold one or more securities. Securities are the actual stocks you own. I set up a transfer every week from my paycheck to transfer the money I contribute to my 401(k) into the corresponding investment account. The account now has a cash balance.
I then enter a transaction as a "Buy" to facilitate the actual purchase of the stocks. I enter in the stock, the number of shares, and the total price paid for that lot of shares (allowing MD to calculate my per-share price.) This is the actual buy of the shares, purchased with the cash balance I just transferred into the account.
After that I use the the extension Diane mentioned to keep my stock prices up to date.
Hope that helps.
Brian
6 Posted by zeke on 09 Aug, 2011 01:41 AM
I'm not sure if Rob and Scott are asking the same question, but I think I understand Scott's so I'll answer that. In Moneydance, an Investment account is like a brokerage account. It is a cash account. Your mutual fund is a security. You create an investment account and a security corresponding to your mutual fund, and associate the security with the investment account. If your mutual fund account is like mine, you simply use money from your bank account to buy shares in your mutual fund account. However, in moneydance this is a two-step process. You transfer money from your bank account to your investment account, and then you buy shares in your mutual fund from your investment account. There is a "BuyXfr" transaction in your investment account, which allows you to do the transaction in one step, but Moneydance actually treats this as a split transaction. This has some side effects, because even tho you think you have done a single transaction, Moneydance treats it in reports and such as two separate transactions (ie. from bank to investment account, from investment account to shares). Another side effect is that your investment account register will not show your share balance like your mutual fund account statement does. It will simply show the cash balance, which will essentially always be 0.0.
In terms of tracking the investment, there is a graph of share value over time in the "security detail" view of your investment account. This is also the only place where you can see your share balance, and only at one time (as far as I know). There are various related reports and graphs, but be forewarned there are some problems w/ the reports dealing with investment performance.
7 Posted by Rob on 10 Aug, 2011 10:01 PM
i cannot stress how difficult this is, this has not been designed well. i bought some share in an index tracker, i dont want to track anything because that does not work but i cant even update the prices manually, i can update them but it doesnt change the value of my investment. ridiculous
8 Posted by jbnyt on 11 Aug, 2011 12:16 AM
Rob,
When inputting prices manually are you putting the price in the Current Price box and not just in the history panel of the Currency/Security History dialog? Values are calculated off the Current Price field so you need to make sure that field is up to date.
9 Posted by zeke on 11 Aug, 2011 12:52 PM
Rob
I also believe the value in the sidebar list does not update until you restart moneydance. It does update right away in the home page total of investment accounts.
Support Staff 10 Posted by Tom Freeman on 11 Aug, 2011 07:48 PM
Rob
Both jbnyt and zeke are correct. You can also double click the account on the sidebar to open a new Moneydance window with the new total in the sidebar.
Tom