continuing to struggle

[davcbr]

Well, I had some time to look into Fund Manager last weekend, and I solved some of my problems, but new ones have cropped up. I ended up writing a small Visual Basic program to process my QIF files as follows: any time a category shows "L_IntInc" changes the transaction to "NIntInc". Any instance of "ContribX" is changed to "NXIn". Any category with "LMisc" changes to "NXIn". Finally, any instance of "YCash" [ my 'cash' as a security, instituted to get by a Quicken bug] is not passed on.
Using this produced a replica of the account I was using. Feeling pretty good about this, I went on to doing this with five accounts. This produced mixed results. The account I had been using and two others came out correct. Two had cash balance problems, both significantly over their actual balances. [BTW, although I enter my data manually into Quicken, the accounts match exactly]. With starting dates of 12/1/1995, this is going to be a gruesome task to find what the problem is. However, I would have confidence in managing future transactions after balancing or correcting the cash balances. Note that every security shows the proper number of shares.
However, more issues came forth. First, I was immediately curious about the cash imbalance that showed up in one account, and decided to take a look at the import table more closely. In this process, I forgot to uncheck the box that said to skip transactions already present. I was presented with a list of about 12-16 transactions that I wondered why they had not been imported. I checked, and it turned out that they HAD BEEN imported already. Why did they show up on this table? This could cause some real problems; as a check, I went ahead and imported them and the balances went way off.
Again that would not be significant in the long run. I did a price history download from 1995 to present for all accounts. I had the same problem others have reported about dialog boxes reporting various log files cannot be saved. This message stops the download and must be attended to. For the size of my download this would have been very bothersome, except that, again a visual basic program handled closing this warning dialog box for me. I had tried all the recommendations - I am the "administrator; I tried unchecking the "read only" property on all Fund Manager folders, but it kept re-checking itself. After going through the download, helped by my VB program, I had the price histories, which I checked. However, only two of the accounts will show any graphs. Again - all were processed the same, all have the correct security amounts and price histories. No graphs for three of the accounts, nice graphs for two of the accounts. BTW, one account has shares of FCX, and it is the only one that has ever had this security. This is verified in the account layout page. In the scatter graph of all accounts, I happened across two spots for it, one showing about what I would expect, and one showing it to be a rather poor performer.
I don't have much more, as I needed to put this down and move on to other stuff. I would be interested in resolving these issues, as I do like this program, at least in its conception.
Thanx
dc

[aviator]

Hi Dc,

I too am a former Quicken user, having switched to Fund Manager a few years ago. Actually, I still use Quicken for my retail banking needs, but I have found FM to be superior for managing investments. I no longer track investments in Quicken.

Unfortunately, I can't help much with your conversion process. I don't know much about how the conversion process works. Mine worked well -- I had to tweak a few things -- but it's been too long ago for me to be of much help. Mark is extremely responsive and I'm sure he'll be able to help.

I don't know how important your history is to you. If cost basis is all you're trying to preserve, have you considered adding your investments to FM using the "Transfer In" functionality? The "Transfer In" allows you to enter cost basis, out of pocket cost and acquisition date. Quicken would still have the history should you need it, but going forward all new transactions would be in FM. I used this method last year when switching brokerage houses and it worked well for me.

[Mark]

Hi Dc,

It sounds like you're down to mostly these 2 issues:

1) Price retrieve log file: What exactly is the error message? I'm guessing it is saying that it cannot open some log file for writing? If so, it should give you the full path to that file. If it is a log file in the "Application Data" or "AppData" path, you can just delete those log files. I would not expect to have a permission problem in there, but deleting the log files should fix it. The log file path on Vista/Windows 7 is here:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Fund Manager

This is not the same as where your normal data files are stored, this is only for temporary log files.

2) Graphs for 3 of your sub-portfolios. What is displayed when you try? For example, select "Graphs / Portfolio Value" so you are on a portfolio based graph. Now, from the top level "Portfolio" menu, go select one of the sub-portfolios that you want to see. If you don't see an expected graph, try resetting the vertical and horizontal scales. You can do a "Shift + R" or use "View / Dates..." and "View / Scale...".

[davcbr]

As I said, I checked and confirmed that the price history updating was successful for all accounts. When selecting individual sub accounts [ ie the individual accounts as imported from Quicken ] only two are able to show plots. The other three cannot. When any graph choice is made, say for an entire account, or an individual security within a chosen account, there is a date range from the earliest date, and a straight line across the horizontal middle of the graph, with, I think, a value = 0. The master account plots graphs, but I assume that is because the two good accounts are 'showing through'.
I need to look closer at the transactions in that one account that were ready to be imported again, when they had already been imported. They were 15 mutual fund transactions out of probably 300 to 500 transactions imported. There were buys, sells, div reinvests, and a transfer in. I may find some inconsistencies, and maybe a clue to why the cash balance is off by about $1000.
As far as the log file thing goes, I have a fix that works for me. However, I would recommend that you do something about this on your end. All the files are in various places within folders named "Fund Manager" which I assume is placed there by your program. If the recommended fix is to delete the file, I think you ought to re-examine the use of a dialog box that interrupts the downloads for an 'unnecessary' file(s).

[Mark]

Hi Dc,

Yes, you should not normally receive any dialog boxes interrupting your price retrieve. This is not normal. If you somehow have some read-only or files without write permission this could happen, but Fund Manager will not ever set the permissions this way.

On the graph problem... Let's focus on a single graph type. For example, start with a "Share Price" graph. Select this type from the top level "Graphs" menu. Select your sub-portfolio from the top level "Portfolio" menu. You should now see a graph for one of the investments in this sub-portfolio. If it is a flat line, note the starting and ending dates. Open up the Data Register, and look and see what you have under the "Prices" data type within this date range. Do you have any closing prices recorded in this date range for this investment that you're seeing a flat line on? If you have some data points recorded, then they will be plotted. Maybe for some reason this investment did not get prices updated. The first step is to verify in the Data Register under the "Prices" data type. If this does not help, please post 2 screen shots of the graph, and the prices in the Data Register. For tips on saving a screen shot, see:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/foru ... f=2&t=1854

[davcbr]

OK
Hopefully you will be seeing 4 pictures:
1. A graph from Acct1 of IGD
2. Price history window of #1
3. A graph from Acct2 of IGD
4. Prices of #2

Both axes are what comes up as a default, which is the range of the price data.

[davcbr]

It appears that I can only do 3 pix.
Here is the fourth

[Mark]

Hi Dc,

Thanks for the screen shots. I'm not sure why that one investment is plotting at 0.00 only. Something doesn't seem right... Can you email me either a backup of your whole portfolio, or just that one investment? To send the whole portfolio, do a "File / Backup..." and email me that *.FMB file. To send just that one problematic investment, look at "Investment Properties... / Statistics" and find the location/filename of the investment, and send me the *.dat investment file. I will send you an email, so you can reply by email with the attachment. If it is okay with you I would prefer the *.FMB, in case there are any interactions with other investments or your portfolio settings. Also, can you let me know what version of Fund Manager you're using? See "Help / About...".

[davcbr]

I hadn't received your e-mail, but I looked into the *.dat files. The contents of the file that plots is identical to the one that doesn't. However, I did see something that bothered me. There are two accounts that hold IGD, one that plots the security and one that doesn't. However, there are three files: IGD.dat, IGD1.dat and IGD2.dat. It is my understanding that Fund Manager creates a security for each account, but why a third? I looked around and another security held by two accounts has three *.dat files. Other securities seem to have two files.
This doesn't seem right; I am suspicious of the importing and price updating I did. When I get a chance, I want to clear out all the data and try again. Now, maybe this is the time to ask if there is a preferred sequence to follow. Each sub account needs to be imported individually. From this point, is it best to right click on the master portfolio and select the price history here to do all the sub accounts at once or do the subaccounts individually? Also, I think one of the first things I discovered was that the QIF file needed to have the security list included in order to get the symbols. However, Quicken puts out one security list that is the same with every account; all securities used in Quicken in all accounts. Thus, this security list is processed by Fund Manager five times for each of the five ac counts imported. Does this matter? In Quicken I have named each security a different name if used in different accounts in order to be able to differentiate them like Fund Manager does. Might this affect the import? It seems that the final tally of securities is correct, so I am guessing not. But could all this mees cause the graphing problem?

[Mark]

Hi Dc,

I did send you an email to the address you registered on the forum with. I sent it at the time of my last post, and it did not bounce, so I suspect it may have been caught by your spam filter. If you still don't see it, just go here:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/email.html

and fill out any simple email message, and then you will see our regular email address, where you can send the files.

For price updating, I would suggest just doing the whole thing at once.

If you have 3 IGD*.dat files, then it sounds like at some point you've created 3. It is possible you only have 2 open, and the third one was from an earlier import, that you no longer have open.

[davcbr]

Yep. Your mail was in my spam.
I think that I've gone through too many iterations on this and jammed things up possibly.

Do you have a recommended method to "clear" Fund Manager of all pertinent settings, data, etc?
If I do an uninstall, will I be able to continue the trial period on a reinstall?

Thanx
dc

[Mark]

Hi Dc,

Yes, you could uninstall Fund Manager, and then delete all the files in "My Documents \ Fund Manager", and then re-install and still have your trial period remaining. Uninstalling does not delete your data files, so if you want those gone, you must manually delete them yourself.

If the only problem is these graphs, I would let me take a look at it before resorting to starting all over. There should be nothing you can enter/import wrong that you cannot change or fix afterwards.

If you'd like to do a quick web meeting, where I connect into your computer, and work with you to straighten this issue out, please give us a call at (480) 705-0129.