Requested Improvements.

[aviator]

Hi Mark,

It's been a while since I've compiled my list of most requested improvements, so in keeping with the holiday season, I thought it would be good to create my "wish list".

1) Freeze my family tree. Would like to see the tree on the left side of the Portfolio Editor to be saved so that each opening of FM manager presents the same look. Would be even better if users could save "views" so that a saved view could be recalled as needed.

2) Increase my income. OK, that might be asking a bit much, but I'd settle for an improvement in the way FM tracks and reports investment income. I'd like to see the income tab of an investments property to include a field to allow a different payment/share for each payment date (instead of assuming that each payment/share is the same for each payment date, as it currently works).

3) Improve reporting. Would like to see reporting by "buckets" across the page. A bucket could be a month, quarter, year, etc., with a total in the right-most column This would be very helpful to see data in monthly or quarterly buckets across a page instead of down.

Most of the points above have been raised in previous posts, but I thought it would be helpful to see them in one place.

Thanks for listening.

[Mark]

Hi aviator,

Thanks for the nicely documented feedback. I understand #1 and #2, but on #3 are you asking for the ability to do this for a given field? You can do it for the whole report using multiple date ranges, but this displays all report fields for all specified date ranges. You can have up to 6 date ranges per report.

[aviator]

Hi Mark,

I should have been more clear about point number three. Here's what I perceive as a problem with the current date ranges used within FM:
1) Each date range duplicates data that I might not want duplicated which eats up valuable real estate on the page.

2) The duplicated data is sometimes confusing to my wife ("why are you showing me the same columns for each date range?")

3) Six date ranges are not enough for monthly buckets. I have several reports that need to show data by month (an example would be investment fees), but I don't have that capability today .

The changes I'm proposing are these:
1) Reports should allow users to differentiate between static and dynamic columns, especially for custom reports. Static columns would be displayed once (on the left side of the report), while dynamic columns would display for each date range on the right side.

2) Expand the date settings to a minimum of 12 date ranges.

3) Add monthly and quarterly reporting to the Date Settings Period. For example, YTD should be expanded to include YTD by Month, and YTD by Quarter.

Quicken has some nice examples of how this would work (I hesitate to even mention Quicken when discussing FM, because there's no comparison, but it's one of the few things Quicken does well).

Hope this helps and let me know if you need further examples.

Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi aviator,

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I understand, and that does sound like it would make a nice improvement.

[aviator]

Hi Mark,

I see that v12.0 is available for beta testing. I'm reluctant to download it because I use FM quite often and would blow through the hundred open limit quickly (and since there's no way to buy the new version yet, not being able to use FM would create quite a problem).

Out of curiosity, can you tell me which feature I've requested above made it into v12? I read through the extensive list of improvements/changes but am unsure if all my requests have made it in.

Please let us know when v12 will be available for purchase (including the beta version).

Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi aviator,

The 100 start limit on the beta version was meant to be high enough to make sure there would be no issues starting it until the official release, but maybe that number was too low. It is not our intent to make this a limitation in trying the beta version. If you do decide to try it, and run into this limit before the official release, I can help reset the counter.

I do believe some of the other requests you made have made it into the v12 release, like listing memorized reports alphabetically, multiple monitor support, and portable/cloud mode for use on Google Drive. Unfortunately, none of the improvements mentioned in this thread made it in. I'm sorry we weren't able to include more of them. We have hundreds of features we considered, and of course not everything made it in.

[aviator]

Thanks, Mark. I downloaded v12 beta this morning and it looks really good. You and your team have done a nice job.

One nitpick: I like the memorized reports now being sorted alphabetically. However, when I change a memorized report and wish to save it under its original name, the drop-down box displays the memorized report names in a different order (that is, not alphabetically). IMHO, this should be consistent with the portfolio editor menu and display report names alphabetically.

[Mark]

Hi aviator,

Good catch, we'll see about getting that fixed.