Automatic Reconcile?

[wchen]

Hi

A while ago, I started evaluating FM. Set up all the accounts and made sure everything was in balance.

After months of inactiveness, I opened up FM again and retrieved all portfolios. Many of them have incorrect balance - I think that is due to some brokerage didn't keep the transactions history that long. So some of the transactions were not retrievable.

When I tried to reconcile, the wizard came up but it seems like I have to go thru each investment and manually update the amount in the register. Is there an option to automatically force the local data sync with the retrieved ones?

I remember Microsoft Money allowed me to do this way.

Thanks!

[Mark]

Hi wchen,

When you came back to FM, did you continue on with the previously reconciled accounts, or did you start all over?

If you use the New Portfolio Wizard and choose the option to retrieve "Transactions and Positions", then Fund Manager will retrieve all available transactions, and then also make whatever adjustment transactions are necessary to get your current balances correct. You can only do this for new accounts. There is no option to force the balancing of existing sub-portfolios. The hope is that you can use the New Portfolio Wizard to get things started off correctly/balanced, and then as long as you retrieve new transactions every so often (more frequently than they would scroll off your broker's OFX server), everything will stay reconciled.

[wchen]

Hi Mark,

I didn't start over with a new account. Based on what you explained, it all makes sense. Is there a plan to add the forced balance feature? I think it's quite useful for potential lazy users like me.

Btw, is there a way to start over as a new account without typing in the account info and as well as the investment info (such as stock/bond/high risks, etc)? It is quite some work...

[Mark]

Hi wchen,

Yes, I can see that being helpful. Maybe an option on the "Reconcile" wizard to automatically make any necessary adjustments. We'll consider this for a future update.

If you want to start over as a new account, just leave your current account open, and use the New Portfolio Wizard again. When the New Portfolio Wizard creates your new investments, it will get many of the defaults from your existing investments with the same symbol, and since you already have these same securities in another account, they will be initialized much better than the first time you did it. If you're happy after running the New Portfolio Wizard, you can then just close your old sub-portfolio.