Issues/enhancements

[ML]

Using product for about 6 weeks and I've a couple of issues/enhancement requests:

1) Transactions dropped from cash position

Main portfolio is split into sub-portfolios by organisation and these into further sub-accounts e.g. Non-protected and Protected SIPP accounts. Each of these accounts has a separate cash position. Have started to reconcile these daily because I seem to loose cash entries, but one of two accounts on which there was activity yesterday - sales/purchases/divi and fees - appears to have lost some of the cash movements. I find the transactions involved, copy, delete and paste them back - but this is becoming a pain.

My options are set to save portfolio and investments on exit - and as I say investment side of transaction is retained. Can understand why you wouldn't want to save all the files back during a price update, but could you make default behaviour to save the files associated with a transaction (investment and cash) upon entry?

2) Having added a new investment you then have to go back into properties to set the multiplier to 0.01 - certainly in the UK. Would it be possible to either 1) specify a default multiplier and/or 2) display the multiplier field on the new position dialog?

[Mark]

Hi ML,

1) Your transactions should be saved automatically if you have "Save Investments on Exit" turned on. If you try to close without this option on, and your data is un-saved, Fund Manager will ask you if you want to save before exiting. It should be pretty hard to exit without saving entered transactions. I'm not sure why transactions would be lost if they were previously entered. Maybe you can keep an eye on it, and see if you can somehow reproduce or narrow down the problem.

2) Thanks for the feedback. This is something we plan on improving. It would be good if you could set more defaults based on the investment type.

[ML]

I haven't been able to pin it down - thought it was copying and pasting transactions but seems ok.

The issue only affects the cash account - the investments are fine. On this occasion the cash account was reconciled prior to exiting.

Would it recognise opening a different portfolio as an exit? It didn't ask to save though.

[Mark]

Hi ML,

Yes, when you open a different portfolio file (*.mm4) you are closing the currently opened one. If you have the save on exit options turned on, you won't be prompted, it will just save.

[ML]

2 possible scenarios:
1) Multiple entries for the same transaction (fund/date) appearing to be a different number of units. Often put in transactions as orders entered and then confirm units when provided day/couple of days later
2) Have two funds from First State where I made a purchase on the same day. Only one entry appeared in Cash. Deleted transactions and entered again - still just one entry - the last entered. Found that deleting the second transaction (2nd fund) was clearing details of 1st fund and vice versa

Are you linking the two sides of the double entry with a unique serial number behind the scenes as this implies attempt to ddo fuzzy search

[ML]

In fact there is a 3rd transaction on the same date, for the same amount, but different fund group.

Having found that as a discrepancy, I have copied the transaction, deleted the original and pasted.

It deleted the first of the First State transactions.

Ho hum

I take it people don't manually enter transactions or if they do so they don't use the app to maintain the cash account?

[Mark]

Hi ML,

I didn't quite follow all the details of what you did there. Let me describe how it should work. Anytime you record a transaction in an investment in a sub-portfolio with a default cash account assigned, there will be a corresponding entry made in the default cash account. If you edit/delete the transaction, it will also edit/delete the cash entry, assuming the cash account is still assigned the same as it was before. I do believe it is perfectly fine to manually record transactions, and have a cash account maintained.

Since you asked about opening other portfolios, please note, that if you have the same investment file located in multiple portfolio files, if you edit that investment in one portfolio file, it will affect it in all portfolio files where that investment file is located.

[ML]

My setup is as you describe - consistent cash accounts

I am experiencing issues however.

I corrected the situation yesterday by deleting all the transactions concerned and recreating them from scratch.

But have been able to muck up again simply by editting one of the transactions. This overwrote the cash transaction details of the earliest details (I'm sorted in descending date order - so furthest down the list) for the same date/value (transaction details for one of the other funds). So I am now missing a cash entry for one fund and have 2 entries with different units for the one fund.

If I delete the transaction for the fund which is no longer registered in the cash account, then it deletes the earliest details for the same date/value.

In this instance it has not impacted the balance. Since I am reconciling to my account balance daily, I suspect that subsequently (and after receiving notice of actual units allocated and hence editing initial record) I might be coming back, noticing missing/duplicated transactions and over compensating e.g. as mentioned yesterday - by deleting the duplicated cash transactions for the single fund purchase having different fund units.

The root cause seems to be editing/deleting transactions for the same value which occur on the same date. Please let me know if you are able to replicate this - otherwise my father also uses the software so should be able to confirm whether its consistent behaviour

[Mark]

Hi ML,

I think I'm understanding the problem, let me see if this is right:

You have multiple transactions from different investments for the same value on the same date. If you edit one of those transactions, it modifies the incorrect cash entry. I am assuming you are basing this "incorrectness" on the "Memo" field, since all the cash entries have the same date/value. Is this the issue?

This could happen. Fund Manager does not have a hard link between a transaction in an investment, and the corresponding default cash account entry. When modifying a transaction, it looks to find a matching entry in the default cash account based on date/value. If you have multiple transactions that could match, it could very well pick the "wrong" one. This will not affect your balance though, as it was an equivalent transaction, just the memo would be off. We'll see about improving this, so that if there are multiple date/value matches, it will look through the memos to find the appropriate match.

If I'm not understanding the problem right, please do let me know.

[ML]

Yeah, thats the problem

[Mark]

Hi ML,

Okay, thanks for the help. We'll see about improving this.