Expense Ratio Reports

[Cole]

I'm needing a report that can break down the dollar amount paid for owning a mutual fund or ETF. Is there a way to enter in a mutual fund or ETF expense ratio for individual investments? Can a report then use that entered expense ratio to calculate the amount paid in dollars for that particular investment? Lastly, is there a way using the entered expense ratios to calculate the total dollar amount paid in expense ratio's for entire portfolio?

Thank you,

Cole

[Mark]

Hi Cole,

You can do this by using one of the custom investment properties. First, go to "Options / Custom Investment Properties..." and define one of the available custom fields to a name of:

Expense Ratio

with a type of "Number" and a "Combination Method" of "Weighted Average" and decimals "2". Now, go to each of your investments, and under "Investment Properties... / Custom" enter the expense ratio for each investment. For example, if the expense ratio is 0.75%, enter 0.75.

You can then report on the expense ratio in either the Portfolio Editor, or a Custom report. To get this into a value based number in a Custom report, define a user-defined field with the equation:

ExpenseRatio*End_value/100

The "User-Defined..." button is in the bottom/left of the "Custom Settings" dialog where you choose which fields to add to your Custom report. This user-defined field feature is available in the Professional and Advisor versions, but not the Personal version.

[Cole]

Thank you, exactly what I needed.

[aviator]

Hi Mark and Cole,

This was a very useful tip, something I've needed for a while but never considered using the method Mark suggested.

Mark, maybe you can add a "tips and tricks" section to the board for items such as this.

And Happy Thanksgiving to all!

[Mark]

Hi aviator,

Thanks for the feedback. From the main FAQ page there is a link to Helpful Tips. I've just added this as a new tip on that page. See it at:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/expense_ratio.php