Re: tracking Euro denominated investments

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In Reply to: tracking Euro denominated investments posted by Merle on June 07, 2005 at 11:49:19:

: I haven't been able to find a clear (to me) explanation in this message board or in the tutorialof how to do what I need. I know that if Fund Manager does do what I need, I have to set up exchange rate investments -- but I don't understand how to do this, or use them.

: Our tax adviser told me that to track my wife's European mutual fund investments (denominated in Euros), I need to book each transaction (purchases, sales, fees, etc.) and convert it to US$ at that day's exchange rate. Then as per the adviser's instructions I calculate the gains (losses) by the FIFO method. I have been doing this for several years now using a spreadsheet program, but it's very laborious, and I'm looking for a program (like Fund Manager, I hope) that will do it. Ideally, for my wife's portfolio, I would like to toggle between US$ and Euro values, to see how performance compares in the two currencies (although for tax reporting purposes we are only using dollars).

: Can you explain for a somewhat software-phobic potential customer the steps required to do this? Maybe all I need is Fund Manager for Dummies -- but unfortunately you haven't published it yet.

Hi Merle,

Setting up currency settings does cause quite a bit of confusion. We could use a tutorial on this, but we don't have one today... You can read about how to do it in the online help here:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/help/dlg_currency.html

Basically, the idea is that you'll set up a new "exchange rate" investment. This is just a regular investment, but its closing price is the exchange rate for each day. You would just own 0 shares in this investment. It is only used to record the daily exchange rate. You assign this exchange rate investment under "Options / Currency Settings...". This way, Fund Manager will use the price from this investment as the exchange rate when converting between the assigned currency and your default currency. When creating your Euro investment, just assign it the currency of Euro. Then, you can toggle the viewing of that investment between Euros and your default currency (US Dollars in your case) with the menu command "View / Exchange Rate Adjusted". You always enter transactions/prices in your investments in the native currency for that investment (Euros for this particular investment).

Also, for setting up exchange rate investments, you can look up all the symbols to use here:

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency

For example, to create an exchange rate investment to convert Euros to a default currency of US Dollars, you would use the symbol: USDEUR=X

Thanks,
Mark
--
Mark Beiley
Fund Manager, portfolio management software for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/00/XP/2003

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