Limit digits for transaction

[Kelvin]

When I purchase shares for my mutual funds, the actual number of shares is always rounded to the nearest 1/1000 (such as 12.345 shares). If FM has a price already (because I've downloaded the prices before I enter the purchase transaction), it calculates the number of shares out to 6 decimal places. This gives an incorrect match with my actual balance in my account.

The Display setting for Share Digits doesn't affect this, as it affects only the display, not the internally recorded value. I have to re-enter the number of shares, at which point the price is recalculated with more decimals to give a precise match for the dollar value of the transaction.

I would like to be able to force all transactions to show a maximum of 3 digits of precision for the number of shares. I would be OK with this choice being either by investment (so that I could make it require whole numbers for regular shares that I purchase) or one setting for the entire application. When a transaction is entered, the price would be automatically adjusted to allow the shares to stay with three decimals. So if the value of the investment is 250, and FM already knows the price is 22.05, rather than calculating 11.337868 shares, it will calculate 11.338, and reset the price to 22.049744 (which is what you get if you enter 250 value and 11.338 shares).

I think I've discussed this before, but I think I didn't have the latest edition of the software, and you suggested a setting I didn't have, so I couldn't see if that would work for me. But I recently upgraded again (I've been a user for over a decade), and I don't see anything that will allow me to set FM up the way I want.

[Mark]

Hi Kelvin,

How are you specifically recording your transactions? Manually? Retrieving from the broker? Importing?

If you're entering manually, please read these tips for avoiding rounding errors when manually entering transactions.

[Kelvin]

The issue comes when I'm recording a transaction manually, and the price is already known because I'm entering a transaction for an earlier date for which I already downloaded the price.

When I enter the buy/sell transaction form, I enter a value for the total amount paid. Because there's already a price entered, FM calculates the number of shares to 6 decimal places. But no brokerage or mutual fund company that I know of records to that level of precision. They all round to 3 decimal places, and that's the actual number of shares I'm credited for. So if I accept what FM has calculated, I'm going to be off a fractional amount from the number of shares that is actually recorded in my account. Instead, I have to re-enter the number of shares, which defeats the point of FM calculating them. This happens almost every time I enter a mutual fund transaction, as well as when I reinvest dividends for regular company shares (I have one company with a reinvestment program that isn't enabled for automated transaction downloads). I use automated retrieval whenever I can, but not all of my accounts provide that.

[Mark]

Hi Kelvin,

Understood. I usually suggest to hit the End key in the shares, and adjust it yourself to however much rounding you want, and then Tab to the Price field, so that gets adjusted based off your rounded share quantity.

I think you're asking for us to automatically only calculate to 3 places. This might be a better default. Mutual funds are not the only type of investment tracked though. Maybe we could make a user-adjustable default for this.

[Kelvin]

Yes, my desired behavior would be:

1) Option to specify maximum number of decimals for the calculated number of shares. (Default would be the current 6, so that behavior doesn't change unless a user specifies. It might be best to make this an option at the investment level, not the application level.)
2) When a buy/sell transaction is entered, if the value is entered and a price exists, calculate the number of shares (as currently).
3) If the rounded value (to the number of decimals specified) is not the same as the calculated value, then save the rounded number of shares and recalculate the price so that it has the larger number of decimals needed to make the equation work.

Thanks for considering this!