Order of Asset Types

[jimkorein]

Is there a way to reorder asset types? The order seems to be important for the reports and graphs, so I would like to be able to order assets so that all classes of equities appear togother, etc. Thanks, Jim

[Mark]

Hi Jim,

Yes. Use "Options / Category Labels...". The order you list them here is the order they will be displayed. Please keep in mind however, that when you assign an investment to an asset type, you are assigning it to a position. For example, if you put an investment in the 3rd asset type, it will stay in the 3rd asset type, no matter what you change the name to.

[jimkorein]

Mark, thanks for the quick response.
So yesterday, I downloaded a whole bunch of positions and went through and assigned them asset classes. Each time I needed a new asset class, I just created one in the next user defined class. But now my stock, bond and other classes are all jumbled up on the reports. Is there any way to rectify this without going through and assigning a new asset class to each position? Can I batch this somehow?

[Mark]

Hi jimkorein,

If you want to re-order them, you can either do it manually, by changing the category label order, and then re-assigning the investment's properties.

Alternatively, if you're comfortable with Excel (or any spreadsheet program) you could use export/import of the asset type information. Check out "File / Export / Other / Asset Type...". The same "Import" command is available, so you could export to a CSV file, use a spreadsheet program to re-order, and then import again. For documentation on the file format, see:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/help ... t_cat.html

[jimkorein]

Thanks, Mark.

[jimkorein]

Mark, I took you suggestion and exported all my Asset Types to a CSV file. I did a couple of tests. When I changed the type of all my assets to 100 in the second position, and reimported them, every changed to that asset type, as I expected. When I just changed one or two, it was a little hard for me to make the same correlation. I suspect this has to do with the fact that there are multiple entries for investments with the same symbol in the CSV file. For example, I have several rows labelled "Cash". Can you tell me how these are reflected back into my investments when I import them? Suppose I hold MSFT in two different portfolios? Is a seperate entry in the CSV file associated with each?
Thanks, Jim

[jimkorein]

Mark, one more question on this. Does the order of the rows in the CSV file matter? Can I reorder them in excel before re-importing them?

[Mark]

Hi jimkorein,

The import is done by symbol, so when you import, only the last row for a given symbol matters, as it will overwrite whatever was imported from earlier rows with that same symbol.

Yes, you can re-order the rows. The order doesn't matter, except in the case where you have multiple rows with the same symbol, because of the reason I described above.

You can also delete duplicate rows with the same symbol, to avoid confusion. It is not necessary to have one row per investment, it is one row per symbol, and all investments with that symbol get updated when importing that row.

[jimkorein]

Mark, thank you very much. Thanks to your help, I now have Asset Allocation working the way I want. Exporting, modifying and re-importing the CSV files works just fine. When a assigned my Asset Types, I made a special type named Unassigned in the first position, whcih makes it very easy to spot any new positions whose Asset Type has not yet been properly defined. One very minor nit. When I re-import the Asset Types, the Pie Chart for Asset Allocation is not automatically updated. I can easily rectify this by just displaying another chart, and then re-displaying the Pie Chart for Asset Allocation. I can't thank you enough for being so responsive to my questions. - Jim

[Mark]

Hi Jim,

Excellent, glad you got it working. Thanks for pointing out that refresh problem. I will look into it. Another (probably faster) way to force the refresh is "Window / Repaint Graphs".