by spock » Tue Mar 01, 2022 9:27 am
I'm finding that Fund Manager Software does a lot that I like, but I'm struggling around account fees and tax information.
I like that Account Fees can be included or not in Yield Calculations. This lets me get a better picture of manager performance, while also evaluating the impact of account fees on performance. However, there are a couple of minor issues:
1) Account Fees (and return of capital) are unique distributions that affect cost basis. Because I take account fees out of cash accounts (they are fees on the entire portfolio, not individual assets) I end up with my cash balances having a cost basis that does not equal their value, which creates a distorted view of the current unrealized gains in the portfolio. The only current solution I'm aware of is to not use the "account fee" distribution type, but then I cannot choose whether or not to include these fees in yield calculations
2) Other payments, like taxes, cannot be optionally included or not in yield calculations. Most of the accounts I have in Fund Manager Software are trust accounts that pay their own taxes. I can either make the tax payments "sales" and therefore have them not included in calculations, or make them distributions and include them. But I can't make a single setting change (like Account Fees) to change this. Like account fees, it's helpful to see the performance of the portfolio excluding taxes, but the actual post-tax performance is important as well. Declaring the taxes paid as an account fee is one workaround to this, but then I can't separate taxes from account fees, and I think (I may be wrong) it would have undesired effects on cost basis tracking as well.
It seems that both of these issues could be solved by allowing the user to include (or exclude) more types of distributions from yield calculations, not just account fees and accrued interest. Then for my issue (1) I could create a separate user-defined type that doesn't affect cost basis, and for (2) I could simply include or not include taxes as needed. I know that no software change is simple, but I hope you might consider something like this as I've seen others on the message board struggle with some similar problems as well.
Thank you!