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2 issues with entering investment transactions

• Edit

krstone

Apr 08, 2011 @ 10:53 PM

When entering a transaction in an investment account:

1- Auto complete in the Security field does not work. Should it?

2- When tabbing through the new transaction fields, one enters the number of shares, then tab to the Amount field. Then a price appears in the Price field but it is always different than the actual price. Then I enter the true price (to two decimals) but it always changes to 4 or 5 decimals. It seems that the Price field should follow the Shares field when entering data.

thanks
Ken

1. 1 Posted by Tom Freeman on Apr 11, 2011 @ 04:42 PM

   

   Ken,

   When you put in the security the current price should show. The reason for the extra decimal places is the math of the amount divided by the share count. When you add a security you have the option for setting the decimal places. You should always set the decimal places to what your broker lists. Moneydance default is 4 decimal places, since yours is 6 I assume that you either imported from another program or downloaded your account from online.

   Once a security has been set there is no way to change the decimal placement. The small numbers do add up and changing this would have an impact.

   Tom

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2. 2 Posted by paleolith on Apr 11, 2011 @ 05:15 PM

   

   It would certainly be more convenient if the fields were better ordered. I find that if I enter the number of shares and then the price, then the money amount (dollars for me) is almost always correct. As Tom said, the number of decimals can depend on your settings. Occasionally I have to go back and fix the total money amount and let the price/share be off a bit.

   It's good to remember what's most important. Most critical is number of shares, because what you actually own is shares, not their current value. Second is the money amount, which is important when you transfer it to another type of account, for example a bank account. Least important is the share price, which AFAIK is only needed when you compute capital gains.

   I look at it this way: my statement shows numbers that don't match. In other words, if I multiply shares by dollars per share, the number of dollars I get is a fraction of a cent different from what the statement shows. I don't know what the tax law say about whether capital gains should be computed on true price or reported price, but I figure that my differences accumulate to so few cents a year that they disappear when I round off to dollars anyway. So I keep the share count and transferred money amounts correct and I don't worry about the share price.

   Edward

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3. 3 Posted by krstone on Apr 11, 2011 @ 05:43 PM

   

   Thanks for the replies.

   What about my first question? Auto complete does not work in the Security field. If I type, for example "Vang" then this could be any of about 10 Vanguard funds that I own. I would expect this to result in one of the full fund names being displayed and then have the ability to scroll (with the up/down arrow keys) to select the desired fund.

   thanks
   Ken

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4. 4 Posted by paleolith on Apr 11, 2011 @ 05:51 PM

   

   My personal opinion is that the lack of auto-complete in the security field is an omission. I haven't noticed it because I have few securities and few transactions using them. Various MD features don't work properly in investment accounts.

   Edward

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5. 5 Posted by Tom Freeman on Apr 18, 2011 @ 12:42 PM

   

   Ken

   I put in a suggestion ticket for the auto complete.

   Tom

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6. System closed this discussion on Mar 31, 2015 @ 03:34 PM.