Custom Field to Account for Retained Income

[jkitchens]

Some accounts I manage are owned by trusts. The trustees need me to keep up with undistributed income and gains passed through to the trust as taxable income from the underlying investments. This enables them to determine the character of future distributions -- income or principal -- received from the investments.

Is there a way to use custom fields within FM to accommodate this need of the trustees?

[Mark]

Hi jkitchens,

Do you just need to keep track of 2 values, or do you need to keep track of many values/dates? If you just need to keep track of 2 values per investment, then you can use the Custom Investment properties. Use "Options / Custom Investment Properties..." to define the label for the 2 values you want. Use "Investment Properties... / Custom" to set the actual values for each investment.

[jkitchens]

Mark, I need to keep track of these 3 numbers for each investment:
[*]Cost
[*]Tax Basis
[*]Undistributed Income

The program already keeps up with Cost and Tax Basis. So it seems I only need to use Custom Investment Properties for Undistributed Income.

I went into the Custom Investment Properties' screen and changed the label for Custom1 to Undistributed Income. Then I selected Number as the type. I was confused about the Combination Method field. I'm not really sure where I should go from here.

Thanks for your help! I think your program is great!

[Mark]

Hi jkitchens,

You probably want a combination method of "Sum", and set the digits to "2". This means if you display a report, sub-totals and totals will be calculated by summing from all the investments.

After this, go to "Investment Properties... / Custom" to assign a value to each investment.

[jkitchens]

This works great. Thanks!

[jkitchens]

Is it possible to import values for custom fields into FM? How about exporting them? Thanks. Jim

[Mark]

Hi Jim,

Yes, you can do this when import transactions using the Generic import command. See "File / Import / Transactions / Generic...". Press "Help" in that dialog. See the:

CIP01
...
CIP10

keys. Those same keys can be used for import or export of these custom investment properties.

[jkitchens]

Mark it seems that CIP01-CIP10 can only be imported for new accounts, not existing ones. Am I right about this? Is there a workaround for this? Thanks. Jim

[Mark]

Hi Jim,

Yes, you are correct. These only apply to new investments.

The workaround isn't too pretty, but you could export all prices/transactions from an existing investment, add the CIPXX values, and re-import into a new investment.

The other workaround is to edit the custom investment properties manually on your existing investments.

[jkitchens]

Mark, I'm checking in to see if you have or would consider modifying FM so that custom fields can be imported for all accounts, including existing ones. Thanks!

[Mark]

Hi jkitchens,

Thanks for the feedback. I can see that being useful. We can try to add this in a future update.