Re: Transaction retrieve usability suggestion

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In Reply to: Re: Transaction retrieve usability suggestion posted by Mark on January 16, 2005 at 12:07:42:

: I understand and share your concern about rounding errors. It is most
: important to get the "shares" field exactly right to eliminate the
: accumulation of rounding errors. When Fund Manager retrieves transactions
: it records the shares exactly as reported by the OFX server; no rounding.
: The price is also recorded exactly as provided by the OFX server.
: Since Fund Manager enforces consistency value must equal shares * price.
: The "value" field is the one that will get rounded to be consistent
: with the reported shares and price. Maybe an option to do the rounding
: the other way would be good. Keep shares/value as reported, and round the
: price. In any case, the editing of an existing transaction, whether recorded
: manually or retrieved, should work the same way. The last edit box where
: you've put the input focus will get adjusted to be consistent with the
: other 2.

Actually, both "shares" and "value" are more important than price. Rounding errors in either "shares" or "value" cause tax-time headaches because FM won't compute an accurate number of shares and/or basis for the security. Fund companies typically quote a price (rounded to the penny) that is really only useful for determining the value of already-held shares; it isn't a precise indication of the per-share price for an invdividual purchase of an arbitrary number of shares.

Personally, I don't want FM to ever adjust "shares" or "value", at least not without an explicit warning that doing so can cause errors in taxable gain calculation.

Replies:

• Re: Transaction retrieve usability suggestion Mark 18:58:23 01/16/05 (0)