Entering Transactions in Multiple Client Sub-Portfolios

[jkitchens]

I manage some investment partnerships. Each month I allocate partnership cash flows to the partners. In the Advisor version, is there a way to enter a transaction in multiple sub-portfolios at the same time? Thanks.

[Mark]

HI jkitchens,

Not by manual entry. You could put the amounts into an Excel spreadsheet, save it as a CSV file, and then import this with "File / Import / Transactions / Generic...". You could re-use the same spreadsheet each month, just changing the dates/amounts. Press "Help" in that dialog for instructions/examples.

[Mark]

Hi jkitchens,

Maybe an example would help... If you have a CSV file, that looks like this:

12345678,IBM,02/01/16,BUY,1,500,0

You could import this with a format string of:

ACCT,SYMB,MM/DD/YY,TRAN,ANUM,BNUM,CNUM

That will import a buy transaction into a sub-portfolio with an account number of 12345678 into an investment with a symbol of IBM for the date Feb 1, 2016 for $500 at a price of $1/share, and no commission.

Each month all you would need to change are the dates and value (BNUM) assuming the price per share stays the same. If it isn't, then you'd have to change that as well. Assuming the date/price are the same you can quickly do this in Excel for all your rows.

[jkitchens]

Mark, thanks for this help.

I selected File / Export / Transactions / Generic and exported transactions from the parent portfolio to a text file. Then I imported the file into Excel and noted all of the transactions. (In the new Excel spreadsheet, I was surprised to see two empty rows between every pair of transactions.) After importing, the spreadsheet had data in the first 7 columns, corresponding to the specified data fields on the export screen of FM.

After saving the spreadsheet file in cvs format, I attempted to import it back into FM. Before doing so, I deleted some of the transactions in FM. Then from within FM I selected File / Import / Transactions / Generic. On this import screen, I selected the csv file, cut and pasted the export format from before into the import format box, and then finally selected the parent portfolio.

When I attempted to complete the import, an error message popped up which said "Could not find all the specified fields in the importing file."

Do you know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks. Jim

[Mark]

Hi Jim,

Take a look at your CSV file in a text editor like Notepad. Viewing in Excel can often hide formatting characters. If that doesn't help, please post a sample line from your CSV file, along with the format string you're using.

[jkitchens]

Mark, here's a sample of what the .csv file looks like in Notepad:

KFI-Mills 04 Trust,Cash,2/2/16,BUY,1,100000,0
,,,,,,
,,,,,,
KFI-Nepotes,Cash,2/2/16,BUY,1,100000,0
,,,,,,
,,,,,,
KFI-WJK Jr,Cash,2/2/16,BUY,1,100000,0

Instead of using number to identify the accounts, I used descriptive text. Hopefully that's not the problem. As I mentioned before, after importing from FM, my Excel spreadsheet contained two empty rows for every row with a transactions. That must be the reason for the ,,,,,, above.

[Mark]

Hi jkitchens,

I just test imported that file, and it imported okay. I used the format string:

ACCT,SYMB,MM/DD/YY,TRAN,ANUM,BNUM,CNUM

I've attached the file I imported, so you can test it too, and see if you can get it working.

[jkitchens]

This is working now. Thanks! Jim