Importing Distributions Per Share

[Septaj]

Hello -

We are able to manually input Distributions Per Share in an investment for which we hold no shares by entering "0" for Value in the Distribution Transaction box - which results in the Distribution Per Share Prompt box.

How is this done when importing Distributions Per Share from, for example, a .csv file?

I have tried several approaches including:

DD/MM/YY,XX,ANUM,TRAN,BNUM,CNUM !REM blah blah

for importing:

12/08/08,65.5,.05,DIST_D,0,0

where "65.5" is share price and ".05" is the Distribution Per Share.

To no avail ...

Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi Septaj,

Unfortunately, this is not something you can import currently. Are you doing this to try and record distributions in an investment you don't actually own?

[Septaj]

Yes. In order to evaluate the historical performance of an investment it is critical that the distributions be included.

Some investments have monthly distributions and, when the data covers years, this becomes very time consuming to enter manually.

Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi Septaj,

Okay, thanks for the feedback. We can consider adding this support to the import. In the mean time, you may want to use the "Yahoo (Adjusted Historical)" quote server to retrieve your pricing. If this server has your quotes, it is good for this purpose, as it automatically back adjusts prices down to reflect any distributions, and splits.

[shanaw]

Hi Mark,

I would just like to add my support for the ability to have historical prices reflect distributions. It would be much easier to compare the historical investment performance of funds you've owned for many years (with actual dividends recorded) versus funds you may have only owned for a short time with no dividend history. After all, real historical performance comparisons are what every investor needs to see.

I'm not at all sure how you could combine Yahoo Quotes with Yahoo Quotes Adjusted Historical to achieve this. The only thing that comes to mind is to have a separate porfolio with every item from all of your 'real portfolios' and retrieve prices from the Adjusted Historical server for these funds. One could then run all investment performance charts and graphs on this collection of funds.

Is this what you have in mind for future enhancements to Fund Manager??

Thanks,
Bill

[Mark]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the feedback. There are a couple ways you can do this today. What I was referring to previously was adding the ability to import distributions as a per-share amount. Currently, when you import distributions, you import the total amount of the distribution, and Fund Manager automatically calculates the correct per-share amount based on how many shares you own. However, if you are trying to import for a period where you don't own any shares, you can't specify the per-share amount, and Fund Manager will just default it to 0. You can manually enter these distributions, and specify the per-share amount, but not via importing.

You can "retrieve" historical distributions for periods even when you don't own any shares. If you use the "Yahoo (Historical)" quote server with the Pro or Advisor versions you will be given the opportunity to retrieve historical distributions. These will import for all periods, even when you don't own any shares. For the periods where you don't own any shares the value of the distribution will be 0, but the per-share amount will be set correctly, as reported by Yahoo.

I think an option to import distributions on a per-share basis would be helpful for these situations, in case you have data from some other source you want to utilize.

[onlyme]

Mark,
I'd just like to add my vote and desire for the facility to import a value that represents "Distribution Amt per Share" via the Generic Import process. Those of us who can't justify the additional expense of purchasing the Professional or Advisor versions of the product in order to achieve automatic download and update of distributions have to rely on sources like Yahoo. Obviously, the .csv download for Dividend Distributions from Yahoo is going to reflect an "Amt per Share". You mention that you are considering including this import feature in the future. Can I ask for a projected availability date for this feature?
--
Max

[Mark]

Hi Max,

Thanks for the feedback. I can understand this desire, and it is on the "to-do" list. I can't give you a specific date, or say for sure if/when it will be implemented, until after we've actually implemented it. The earliest that I would see it getting added would be in an 11.0 release, which is probably at least a year away...