Program Limits

[clivusmul]

Hi Mark, One more question B4 I buy online...
I am about to purchase a version of FM and want to be smart about which version to buy... I notice the Personal Version is limited to "500 Investments in a Portfolio" with "Unlimited Portfolios in all versions... The Professional Version has the 500 limit raised to 5000. I'm not sure what this really means... I already have > 2200 ".dat" files in the stored evaluation database.
I currently use 8 broker accounts with over 100 "investments" in the IRA and around 20 on average in another 5 and 3-4 in the remaining 2 accounts...
Over the years, sold assets in any account (portfolio?) having zero shares may or will likely remain in the database. Do these prior holdings with zero shares accumulate to the 500 investment limit within any portfolio? If so, perhaps it would be prudent to buy the Professional version to help avoid this program limitation? I assume the work done to establish the Personal database can be exported to the Professional version?
Suggestions please. Kindly, bj

[Mark]

Hi clivusmul,

Yes, the Personal version limit of 500 investments includes any open investment in all your sub-portfolios. This includes any hidden investments that are still open. You can see how many you have now by looking at the Properties... of your top level sub-portfolio.

You can easily switch between the different versions. The data files are the same format, so you can just install the Professional version, and continue on. You don't have to export/import or anything like that. Just install the Professional version right over your Personal version. Do not uninstall anything. The only limitation here is if you create a portfolio file with more than 500 investments using the Professional version, you wouldn't be able to open that in the Personal version.

[clivusmul]

Thanks Mark. I queried the Main Portfolio properties screen and see I have 124 "investments" currently being managed... This is a greatly truncated list as I did a lot of work to "import" just the current holdings only using a combination of Broker "holdings" Internet inputs and manual entries from Quicken on those brokerages that fail to utilize Internet reconciles; rather they use QIF exports... I need to enter cost basis for all current holdings but that is another chore to be done... I did/do a lot of covered call transactions and they tend to accumulate tons of expired but still historical transactions... My quicken file has over 700 "securities" identified and still being carried as mostly baggage in the program... I think it would be wise to go for the Professional version.. Thanks very much for your fine and prompt support! Bob J.