Portfolio Performance Report Question

[hipped1]

I've noticed something strange on the portfolio performance report.

I recently hid a few investments in my portfolio as my positions had been closed during the first quarter and I no longer owned any shares.

When I run the portfolio report for the first quarter, those hidden securities are not listed on the report. However, it appears that the hidden securities are included in the totals for the quarter.

If i dump the report to a CSV file, the detail lines on the report do not total to the summary totals at the botom of the report. The difference for each column is the sum of the hidden investments even though they are not listed in the line detail.

Is this working as designed or is there a setting i should change on the report to have those closed positions listed in the detail lines?

I've tried playing with the report, preferences, general settings - specifically the "do not display investments with zero share balance" settings but nothing seems to add back the hidden securities. I've tried each of the three settings and the zero dollar / zero share securities are not listed and the report totals don't seem to change.

Thanks
Mark

[Mark]

Hi hipped1,

It is working as designed. If you hide an investment, it won't be explicitly listed in a report, but hidden items are still always included in overall totals. (This is the difference between hiding something and closing it.) Generally you don't want to hide something that still owns shares, or owns shares during a period you want to report on. You have several options:

1) Turn on "View / Hidden Investments/Portfolios", and you'll see everything.

2) Run the "Hide Sold Investments" command, but set it for the date range of your report, or year to date if you're running it for Q1. This will hide only investments that have not owned shares during that period, and un-hide investments that were owned at all during this period, which it sounds like is the case here. If you were to run this command for only today - today it will hide things you don't own as of today, even if you owned them during the quarter. That sounds like what has happened here.

3) Manually hide/un-hide using the "Investment Properties... / Other / Hidden".

4) Un-hide everything, and rely just on that report preference. If you set "Options / Report Preferences... / General / Do Not Display Investments With Zero Share Balance" to "Over Entire Report Date Range", it will automatically not display investments that weren't owned at all during the report date range. This option is in addition to the hidden attribute of an investment. If an investment is either hidden, or matches this report preference, it won't be shown. Turning on "View / Hidden Investments/Portfolios" always causes everything to be shown no matter what the report preference or hidden attribute are set to. Generally you want to leave "View / Hidden Investments/Portfolios" turned off, so you can have your preferences applied on what to show, but when trying to see everything, or debug a situation it can be helpful to turn that option on.

For help on learning to use hidden investments, we have a tutorial. See:

https://youtu.be/2bb7hSew_8g

[hipped1]

Mark,

Thanks for the variety of approaches provided to remedy the missing data on the report.

I think the ability to hide investments is very helpful in managing a portfolio day to day. Its a feature i use regularly to reduce the number of investments on the portfolio editor screen.

I'm not sure un-hiding investments is a solution or process that works for me in order to get these investments listed on a performance report. If I understand correctly I would need to unhide investments, generate the report which would then show the detail matching the summary totals, and then hide these investments once the report is generated so they don't clutter up the portfolio editor screen. If i need to re-run the report for a different time period, the process would need to be repeated.

I appreciate the fact that hidden investments are included in the report performance, I'm just a little concerned when details on a report don't match the summary totals.

Three suggestions/thoughts:

1) Could there be an option to include the hidden investments in these reports so that to report could provide the full detail on all investments for the time period under review? That is the ideal solution as the investments could remain hidden and the report detail would match the report totals. Presumably the data is already available at some point in this process in order to calculate the totals and returns, just not written to the report?

2) If its not possible to include hidden investments, could there be detail line on the performance report listing other investments (which would be the summarized total of the hidden investments listed as one line item). That way the detail of the lines on this report would match the totals at the bottom of the page. Not ideal from a review standpoint but better than the report detail not matching the summary totals.

3) The other approach would be to allow the portfolio editor screen to have an option or fliter to not display securities with 0.00 shares. That would have the same desired effect and reducing the number of lines on the portfolio editor screen to only show open positions without requiring that the investments be hidden.

I realize the software is quite complete an my suggestions/comments may not make sense or be possible to incorporate into the software. That said it doesn't hurt to ask especially if the process of getting the detail lines on the reports to match the totals can be done in a more efficient manner for the users.

Thanks
Mark schroeder

[Mark]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the ideas/feedback. I like both of those ideas. A new report option for "Options / Report Preferences... / General / Do Not Display Investments With Zero Share Balance" that says "Show hidden investments with a share balance" or something like that could be useful. That would be more flexible in showing all relevant investments, no matter the report date range, without having to go hide/un-hide investments.

[hipped1]

That would be an improvement, thanks for the consideration.

Mark