tag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:/discussions/switching-from-another-personal-finance-program/17186-simple-investment-trackingInfinite Kind: Discussion 2020-11-08T09:50:26Ztag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/485314322020-08-08T15:00:32Z2020-08-08T15:00:32Zsimple investment tracking<div><p>I'm testing a switch to MD. For investments my tracking currently (in SEE Finance 1.1) is quite simple - I don't really want to track each individual share, I just update the total value in each account every week or month. When I imported my accounts, that didn't work. What do you recommend for a low maintenance method of investment tracking? Is it possible to import everything as cash transactions? Is there a better way?<br>
thanks</p></div>jaynewman.chinatag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/485314322020-08-08T21:06:42Z2020-08-08T21:06:42Zsimple investment tracking<div><p>I'm a fellow user.</p>
<p>Investments in Moneydance are geared around buy and sell transactions to change the investment and with price changing the values.</p>
<p>If all you want to do is simply maintain a $ value, you might like to look to Asset accounts to see if they would work better for you.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/485314322020-08-09T09:08:31Z2020-08-09T09:08:31Zsimple investment tracking<div><p>thanks DWG, will give that a try.</p></div>jaynewman.chinatag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/485314322020-08-09T09:20:34Z2020-08-09T09:20:34Zsimple investment tracking<div><p>I have a couple of fund investment that it is not practical to handle the individual investments within those funds- it would involve a lot of manual data entry to do so.</p>
<p>To fit how Moneydance works the best in Investment accounts I built a spreadsheet that works with the monthly value of the fund to derive a per unit price which I enter into Moneydance.</p>
<p>I wanted to use an Investment account as it shows the changes in the investment's overall value better.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/485314322020-08-09T09:31:03Z2020-08-09T09:31:03Zsimple investment tracking<div><p>Up to now, I've used finance programs to maintain the data in a sensible<br>
form and to view it graphically. For budgets and category tracking, I<br>
export to Excel to manipulate for reports, because that was always easier<br>
than building a report that matched what I wanted to see. For investments,<br>
I mostly track the ups and downs graphically for a whole account or all<br>
accounts grouped together. But I track individual shares or funds in the<br>
website of the broker, and I built another spreadsheet with individual<br>
shares and funds for tracking risk - i.e., what percentage of investments<br>
are in equities, bonds, cash on a given date. But I think these methods<br>
have simply developed because of the characteristics of the program I was<br>
using (SEE Finance). If I stick with MD (not yet a foregone conclusion) I<br>
imagine I'll develop new approaches to fit its characteristics.</p>
<p>Thanks again</p></div>jaynewman.chinatag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/485314322020-08-09T09:44:40Z2020-08-09T09:44:40Zsimple investment tracking<div><p>I see a lot of expectations that in a single piece of software you will be able to do everything.</p>
<p>It is not a realistic expectation in my view, just how much you will be able to do depends on the software but I do not see it ever being 100% for anything other than the simplest of requirements.</p>
<p>I have got Moneydance to do most of the text based reporting I need, a few things it cannot but that is more due to the rules we have here, only software with a custom report writer could hope to do it.</p>
<p>I use Moneydance plus some spreadsheets to maintain the data I need, I think for many they will need to use a combination of tools and I find the combination of Moneydance plus spreadsheet software to be the tools that works for me. I do put the spreadsheets into Moneydance's data path so they will be included in any backup.</p></div>dwg