View currency info in Capital Gains Reports

[gbenn]

Running 11.9 Professional. I own both US and Canadian stocks. My default currency is CAD. When I generate a capital gains report for my portfolio, no currency type information is displayed and when I "view data in default currency units (adjusted by exchange rate)", the data changes but I still have no information in the report as to the currency being displayed. Is there a way to add something to this report so I know if it contains all values in CAD or a combination of CAD/USD. I currently print these reports and manually write on them "CAD" or CAD/USD". Am I missing something?
Thx

[Djobydjoba]

Hi gbenn,

My personal trick : for the investments in foreign (not default) currency, I add the currency symbol (3 letters) to the investment name, into bracket.

For example :
Apple [USD]

Because the currency information is very important, and I want to see it immediately in graphs and reports.

[gbenn]

Hi Djobydjoba,

This trick helps to identify my US stocks but when I toggle the "view data in default currency units (adjusted by exchange rate)" I still do not know what currency is being displayed on the report. I need a currency variable that will display the current currency when I toggle this option. Ideally, I would like to customize the header and add this variable, but that option does not seem to be available.

[Mark]

Hi gbenn,

You're right, the currency displayed is not available in the Capital Gains report, and it would be much better if it were. We'll plan to improve this. In some of the reports, it is shown in the column headers, either as:

Value ($)
when all the values are in the $ currency.

or

Value (na)
when the values are in multiple currencies.

For the Capital Gain report we could do a few things:

1) Add a new column, showing the currency
2) Put a summary somewhere, like in the header/footer either showing ($) or (na)

#1 would be nice because you could see what currency each item was being displayed in. #2 would be simpler, but not as informative. Maybe it would be best to auto-display that column, but only when the report is displaying items in multiple currencies. If everything is in a single currency, we could just add that currency to the header or footer. Any thoughts/preferences from your point of view?

[gbenn]

Hi Mark,

A separate column would be nice. This would clearly show the displayed currency for each investment. The auto display feature sounds good when displaying multiple currencies. Also, when only one currency is being displayed, having the currency in the header would also be helpful.

Thx

Graham

[Mark]

Hi Graham,

Okay, thanks for the feedback. We'll look into improving this area.

[Laika]

I have a related question. Is it possible for FM to calculate capital gains for foreign securities based on an exchange rate on the date of the transaction?

For example, I live in Canada, and have a US money market fund, which always has a share price of $1 USD. There were a number of buy/sell transactions in 2013. However, there are no capital gains shown in the Capital Gains Report (irrespective of the "Exchange Rate Adjusted" option). Even if the share price is always $1 USD, its price in CAD obviously fluctuates. I would like the Report to calculate gains based on CAD for tax purposes. Is there a way FM can do this for me?

Thanks,
Laika

[Mark]

Hi Laika,

Yes, you can do this. Just make sure you've set up your currency settings so that USD properly converts to CAD. You will need to create a USD->CAD exchange rate investment, and assign it. When you run the Capital Gains report, make sure to turn on "View / Exchange Rate Adjusted". All the values will be converted/displayed in your default currency of choice (CAD for you). If you need help setting up your currency settings, please check out this tutorial:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/tuto ... video.html

Also, since you mentioned this is for a money market, make sure that this money market type is being displayed in the Capital Gains report. By default, cash type investments are not displayed. You can check the investment type of your money market under "Investment Properties... / General". Alternatively, you can adjust your Capital Gain report preferences under "Options / Report Preferences... / Capital Gains / Exclude Cash Type Investments".

[Laika]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the very fast and detailed reply. The issue ended up being that historical exchange rates were not being downloaded correctly from yahoo. I switched to Bloomberg historical, as indicated elsewhere on the website. Unfortunately for my tax bill, the capital gains are now being correctly calculated.

Thanks again,
Laika