Cash Account Totals

[johnreid]

In order to get my cash account totals, I go into Reports --> Investment Transactions and then go to my portfolio cash account. While I see the individual transactions listed, FM does not provide totals that match each transaction. What I get is a figure that has no relationship to the actual transaction but appears to be a total of Share Balance - the second last column on the Report. I have tried to get rid of this column to no avail; and I have checked all of the transactions to see if there is something in any of them that might cause this problem but have been unable to find anything.

I have been unable to find a way to customize the Investment Transactions Report to eliminate this Share Balance item but I have been unable to find a way.

I have input the cash data transactions into a spreadsheet and it agrees with my Broker's statement; so I am confident that my data entry is correct. I don't understand why FM does not provide the totals information instead of Share Balance, which does not appear to relate to the information I have input.

The data is made up of the previous months Cash On Hand total, and then the dividends and purchases that took place in that month.

johnreid

[Mark]

Hi johnreid,

If you want to know your cash balance, you can look at the current balance in the Portfolio Editor, or the balance on any particular date in a report, like the Portfolio Value report.

The "Investment Transactions" report is meant to show you the recorded transactions. The "Share Balance" column in this report displays the end of day share balance in the investment on that line item. For a cash account, since the price is $1, this is generally the same as your value. You can customize which columns are displayed in this report. While viewing the report, select "Options / Report Preferences... / Investment Transactions".

[johnreid]

Dear Mark,

I am entering all of the cash transactions in my various portfolios for the past year starting 1 Jan. To ensure that my data entry is correct, I have been trying to find a way to check out my data entry and FM's system against my Broker's reports. I have to do this since none of my brokers are on your list to download transactions as I am in Canada.

With the exception of "Investment Transactions", all the other reports (as well as the Custom ones) are focused on Portfolios. What I want is a report that will permit me to go in and examine individual stocks (including my cash accountfor each sub-portfolio) to ensure that all the data is there and that it is being treated correctly. I thought the Investment Transactions Report would do the job since it should be reporting each investment transaction and I expected that it would give me the on going totals; but it does not appear that it has that capability.

You indicated that if I went to "Options -->Report Preferences -->Investment Transactions, I would be able to make changes to the Investment Transactions Report. I have Version 8.10 and all I can do from there is to sort investments by a)Date or b) by stock.

Do you have any suggestions as to how I might be able to accomplish my data entry and check out each stock in the portfolio without examining each stock individually, including the cash account where all of the transactions end up.

Thanks,

johnreid

[Mark]

Hi johnreid,

If you upgrade to 10.x you will have that dialog I mentioned, and be able to set which columns display in the Investment Transactions report. I didn't realize you were on 8.10 when I made that suggestion. You can make a copy of your data, and then download the 10.x evaluation version to test it out. Make a copy of your data in case you do not want to stick with 10.x, as 10.x will save your data in a new file format.