The following guide is
intended to help new users of Fund Manager get started
tracking their portfolios. We will create a
hypothetical portfolio and update our investments with
historical prices and example transactions. Our
example portfolio will consist of 4 investments: one
stock, one mutual fund, the Dow Jones index, and a
cash account. In the tutorial we will go through the
following steps:
- Create
new investments
- Obtain
historical prices for our new investments
- Update
our investments with example transactions
- Save
these investments into a new portfolio
Before starting, you
should have already downloaded and installed the
program onto your computer. If you haven't already
installed the program visit our download
page to obtain it. After installing the program, you
can start Fund Manager by choosing "Start/Programs/Fund
Manager/Fund Manager".
Create
New Investments
First, close any open
investments or portfolios that you may have open. Use
"File/Close Portfolio" or
"File/Close All Investments"
to make your Fund Manager window look like the
following picture:
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When there are no open
investments, the window will be empty, with only the
"File" and "Help"
menus available. To start creating our new
investments, select "File/New
Investment...", or press the 
button on the toolbar. You will be presented with the
New Investment dialog. We will first create an
investment for our example stock, Intel. Fill in the
fields of this dialog as shown here:
Here, we have entered
the last closing price, which was 82 5/16 on 12/31/99.
We are going to start this investment off with 0
shares for now. We will enter our transactions later.
Generally, if you are
creating a new investment that you have just invested
in, then you would enter the price you paid, the
number of shares you bought, and the commission paid.
On the other hand, if you have some past transactions
you would just enter 0 shares for now, and enter the
transactions separately.
Any of this data can
always be edited later, so if you make a mistake,
don't worry, we'll show you how you can fix it.
After filling in the
New Investment dialog as shown, click on the OK
button, and you will be presented with the Save
Investment As dialog:
By default, Fund
Manager fills in the file name for you with the symbol
of your investment. You can change this to any file
name you prefer. The file name extension for Fund
Manager investments is *.dat. You can save your
investments in any folder you choose. By default, Fund
Manager will start in the "my_data" folder,
underneath the folder where you installed Fund
Manager, but you can change this to any folder you
choose. Once you've selected the location and file
name, click the Save button. The main Fund Manager
window will now look like:
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| If your window looks
different, check under the "Graphs"
menu to make sure you have the graph type of "Price
+ Distributions" selected.
The "Main"
window is now displayed, with a single graph, the
graph of Intel from 12/31/99 to 12/31/99, since we
only have one price recorded. The "Main"
window is where the graphs are displayed. Above the
graphs, you can have yields displayed, as shown in
this picture. Since we currently don't have enough
price points, all the yields are reported as N.A.. The
status bar along the bottom shows today's date and
time, as well as the X and Y coordinates of the mouse
when this screen shot was taken.
If you made a mistake
in entering any of the investment properties, such as
name, symbol, currency, asset type, investment type,
or investment goal, you can edit this information in
the Investment Properties dialog. To get this dialog,
select the menu command "Edit/Investment
Properties...", or you can right mouse
click on any investment's graph, and choose "Investment
Properties..." from the popup menu. The
"Edit/Investment Properties..."
menu command opens the Investment Properties dialog
for the topmost investment in the investment stack. By
right mouse clicking you can open the Investment
Properties on any displayed investment.
The "investment
stack" is the order of all currently opened
investments. The investment stack determines which
investment graphs will be displayed and their order.
When the number of displays is set to 1, the
investment on the top of the investment stack will be
displayed. When the number of displays is set to 4 or
9 the top left graph will display the top of the
investment stack. The subsequent investments on the
stack will be displayed first from left to right, and
then top to bottom, just as the writing on a page. The
investment stack can be manipulated in a variety of
ways. The arrow and page up/down keys allow quick
manipulation (see "Help/Keyboard...").
The "Investments" menu
allows you to see the order of the investments in the
stack, as well as manipulate the stack with the "Order",
"Select", and "Sort
By" commands. Choosing an investment's
name from the "Investments"
menu scrolls that investment to the top of the stack,
and sets the number of displays to 1. When an
investment is opened or created it is placed on top of
the investment stack.
Now, let's repeat the
process of creating a new investment 3 more times,
once for our example mutual fund, Janus Fund, once for
the Dow Jones index, and then again for a cash
account. You do this, just as before, by selecting
"File/New Investment..."
from the menu, and then filling out the New Investment
dialog and saving the investments to files. When
creating each new investment, fill them out like this:
After you create each
investment, it will be put on the top of the
investment stack, and be displayed in the
"Main" graph window. You can see a listing
of your investments as you create them, under the
"Investments" menu. After
creating all 4 investments, choose the menu command
"View/Number of Displays/4",
or select the  button from the
toolbar. This will display the top 4 investments in
your investment stack. Since we only have 4 open
investments in our stack, all 4 will be displayed.
Your display should now look similar to this:
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| We have now manually
created 4 new investments. In addition to manually
creating new investments with the "File/New
Investment..." command, you can also
create new investments by importing from a .QIF
(Quicken Interchange Format) file. Several popular
programs such as Quicken and Microsoft Money can
export QIF files, which makes creating new investments
in Fund Manager very quick and easy. To create new
investments in this manner (or update existing
investments with transactions), use "File/Import/Transactions/Quicken...".
We will not cover this method here, but you can select
the "Help..." button from
within the Quicken transaction import dialog to get
detailed step-by-step instructions.
Now that we've created
new investments, let's update them with some
historical prices.
Obtain
Historical Prices For Our New Investments
Fund Manager can
retrieve historical prices for your investments from
the internet. Fund Manager supports many different
quote servers, offering different quotes from around
the world. For a list of all the supported quote
servers, and more details on each, click here.
The default quote server is Yahoo, which is a good
server for daily price quotes. To change the quote
server to a historical server, select "Options/Internet
Settings..." and then choose the "Yahoo
(Historical)" quote server, and click
OK. Next, select the menu command "Edit/Update
Price/Retrieve - Internet" or select the
 button from the toolbar. You
will be prompted for a date range to update prices
for. This quote server will retrieve up to 200 days
per retrieve, so let's ask for the last 6 months'
worth of prices:
You can collect data
for longer time periods by performing multiple
retrieves. Select the OK button to retrieve the
prices. During the retrieve a status dialog will be
displayed. Once the first retrieve is complete, do
another one, this time requesting the prices from
1/1/99 through 6/30/99. Once the second retrieve is
complete, your Fund Manager window should look like
this:
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| Note, the cash
investment was not updated. By default cash
investments are set to not retrieve, as their share
price is usually kept constant at $1. This is an
adjustable option (Investment
Properties.../Other/Internet Retrieve Updates Price).
To get the Investment Properties dialog for any
investment, right mouse click on any investment's
graph, and choose "Investment
Properties..." from the popup menu.
Also, note the large
drop in Intel around 4/99. This is due to a split,
which we will take care of shortly.
The graph type shown in
this screen shot is the "NAV + DIV"
graph, which plots the share price summed with any
distributions/share. Since distributions decrease the
share price by the same amount as the distribution,
this graph type is intended to show the true
performance of the investment. There are many other
graph types available, by selecting them from the
"Graphs" menu. Underneath
the "NAV + DIV" label is
the latest share price and the change from the prior
day in parenthesis. Below this is the value (prefixed
with V:) and the change in value from
the prior day in parenthesis.
All of the yields are
still "N.A.", as we are on
the ROI yield type, and we don't have any transactions
recorded yet. Select the yield type and settings under
the "Yields" menu. See the
"Yield Calculations" help
topic in the online help for a discussion on the
different yield types available, what they mean, and
the equations used. The online help is available by
choosing "Help/Contents..."
from the Fund Manager menu. From within any graph type
or report, you can select either "Help/Help
on Graph..." or "Help/Help
on Report..." for a description of the
graph or report. We haven't created a report yet, but
will before we're done.
Once you are done
updating historical prices, go back to "Options/Internet
Settings..." and change the quote server
back to "Yahoo" or whatever
other daily price quote
server you wish
to use in the future. You will use this quote server
for updating current prices from here on.
Alternatively, you could also keep the historical
server selected, and update your prices weekly,
monthly, or however often you wish. The historical
server is a little slower, and does not get updated as
frequently as the daily quote servers. Usually the
daily quote servers offer 20 minute delayed quotes,
where the historical server is usually only updated
daily.
Update
Our Investments With Example Transactions
We will now go through
manually entering some example transactions into our
investments.
If you have your
transaction data in another program already, such as
Quicken or Money, you can import your transactions
instead. See "File/Import/Transactions/Quicken...".
There is also a generic transaction import feature, if
you have your data available in a text format. Choose
the "Help..." button from
within either of these dialog boxes to get detailed
step-by-step instructions for each of those methods.
We will manually enter
the following transactions for each investment:
Intel
Corp.:
- Bought 1,000 shares
on 1/11/99 for $135 1/2 per share ($12 commission
fee)
- Received a $60
distribution on 2/3/99
- A 2 for 1 split on
4/12/99
- Received a $60
distribution on 5/5/99
- Sold 500 shares on
6/15/99 for $55 per share ($12 commission fee)
- Received a $45
distribution on 8/4/99
- Received a $45
distribution on 11/3/99
Janus
Fund:
- Invested $10,000 to
purchase 286.697 shares on 1/6/99
- Invested $500 on
2/5/99 to purchase 14.302 shares on 2/5/99
- Reinvested a $102.42
Dividend distribution on 12/10/99 to purchase
2.432 shares
- Reinvested a
$1468.73 Long Term Capital Gain distribution on
12/10/99 to purchase 34.870 shares
Waterhouse
Cash:
- (no more
transaction, we've started it off with our current
balance on 12/31/99, $10,000.)
Dow Jones:
- (no transactions,
we're just tracking this index)
For
viewing/editing/adding transactions you'll use the
data register by choosing "Edit/All
Data..." from the menu or selecting the 
button from the toolbar. Another way to access the
data register is by right mouse clicking on any
investment, and choosing "Edit All
Data..." from the popup menu. The data
register will come up at first looking like this:
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| By default the data
register is displaying the "Prices"
data type, and the topmost investment in our stack,
Waterhouse Cash. The "Prices"
data type shows your recorded closing prices and the
share and value balance on each of those dates, along
with possible volume/high/low information. To start
entering our transactions for Intel, change the "Investment"
combo box to "Intel Corp."
and change the "Data Type"
combo box to "Investments (all)".
You will notice under the "Data Type"
combo box there are 5 top level data types: Prices,
Investments (all), Distributions
(all), Splits, and Alerts.
You can also select one of the sub-categories, like
"Purchases", which is a
sub-set of "Investments (all)".
When you select "Investments (all)",
all purchases, reinvestments, and redemptions are
shown. The same concept applies to "Distributions
(all)" and its sub-categories.
After selecting Intel
Corp. and the "Investments (all)"
data type, choose the "New..."
button and enter the initial purchase information as
shown here:
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| After pressing the OK
button you will see your purchase listed in the Data
section of the Price/Transactions dialog. Next, to
enter the distribution on 2/3/99, change the "Data
Type" to "Distributions
(all)" and select the "New..."
button, and then fill in the dialog as shown here: |
| Once you click the OK
button you will see your distribution added into the
Data section again. Now, to record the split, change
the "Data Type" to "Splits"
and choose the "New..."
button again. Enter in the split information as shown
here: |
| Click the OK button, and
you will see your split listed. Now, go ahead and
repeat these steps to record the other example
transactions for Intel.
To record the sell, select the "Investments
(all)" data type (you could also choose
the "Redemptions"
sub-category data type), and then choose the "New..."
button and fill in the dialog. To record the other
distributions, select the "Distributions
(all)" data type (or you could choose
the "Dividends"
sub-category), and then choose the "New..."
button to record each dividend distribution. After
recording the Intel Corp. transactions, change the
"Investment" selection to
Janus Fund and record the example
transactions for Janus Fund
in a similar manner.
Recording
Transactions Without Rounding Errors:
Often there can be small rounding errors on your
transaction summary statement, as provided by your
fund company. Improperly recorded, this can lead to
small differences between the share balances reported
by Fund Manager and your statements. To prevent
rounding errors, record the Value and
Shares fields in Fund Manager as
displayed on your fund statement. Then, press the Tab
key to move the input focus to the Price
field. Fund Manager will automatically adjust the Price
field to be consistent with the Value
and Shares. This method records the Value
and Shares as displayed on your
statement. If there are rounding errors on your
statement, the Price recorded by Fund
Manager will be adjusted to the correct price
(consistent with the Value and Shares).
Fund Manager always ensures that Value
= Shares * Price.
You can move the input
focus around on a dialog box by pressing the Tab key
on your keyboard. The order that the focus moves
around on a dialog box is referred to as the "tab
order". The transaction dialogs in Fund Manager
have their tab order set to facilitate this recording
method. The tab order in transaction dialogs moves
from the Value, to the Shares,
and then to the Price controls.
When recording
transactions in investments that have had splits
occur, record the transaction data as it occurred on
the date of the transaction. Also, by default, Fund
Manager displays your data adjusted for splits. You
can toggle this option on/off with the menu command
"View/Split Adjusted".
After entering all of
the example transactions, change the "Data
Type" back to "Prices",
and select the Intel Corp. investment. You will see
the dialog looks like this:
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With the "Prices"
data type selected, the "Data"
list shows a listing of the recorded closing prices.
Next to each price is a  or 
symbol, indicating whether the price went up or down
from the prior price. There are other similar symbols
in the different data types to help visualize your
data. Also, notice the  icon
in the "Date" column
header. This arrow indicates the sort order of the
data list. You can control this by clicking on any
column's header to sort by that column. Clicking on
the same column header again, switches the sort order
between ascending and descending. When sorting by
ascending, the arrow icon will be facing up, instead
of down. You can also adjust the width of any of these
columns by clicking and dragging on the edge of any of
the column headers. You can also adjust the order of
these columns, by using your mouse to drag any column
header to a new desired location.
Now dismiss this dialog
by choosing "Done". On your
graphs you will now see "markers" displayed
where you recorded transactions. You can move your
cursor over any marker to display the transaction
details in the status bar. To edit the transaction
details associated with any marker, move your cursor
over the marker, and right mouse click on it, and then
choose "Edit Marker" from
the popup menu.
Besides the
Price/Transaction dialog, you can also get a listing
of your recorded transactions in the "Investment
Transactions" report. To create our
first report, select the menu command "Reports/Investment
Transactions...". The "Report
Settings" dialog will appear. From the
"Investment" combo box,
select "<Entire Portfolio>"
and then choose "Done" to
create the report:
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Aandelen: Fund manager
)
with your mouse. Reports can be customized as to their color,
font, and other preferences under the "Options"
menu.
and 
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