Re: New Tutorial & Cash Accounts
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Posted by Tom on January 26, 2000 at 01:43:59:
In Reply to: Re: New Tutorial & Cash Accounts posted by Mark on January 25, 2000 at 22:16:14:
: : Hi Mark, Thanks for posting the new tutorial/introduction
: : to Fund Manager. I know that for lots of us visual examples
: : are a *much* more effective means of learning something new than
: : trying to digest dry text. It's a welcome addition. : : I'd like to suggest an addition to the tutorial (ver 1.01 ?)for
: : you to consider. I was surprised to see the minimal discussion
: : of a cash account. This is, by far, the area of configuring FM
: : that gave me the most trouble. Those of us that actually use
: : "real world" Cash Accounts in FM that mirror our brokerage accounts
: : *need* to know that when "setting up" the portfolio you *must*
: : enter the cash account info *first*. I'm sure that anyone who
: : spent an entire evening entering all of their portfolio data,
: : and doing the cash account last (because it was the "least
: : important" entry), only to find that it didn't work and had to
: : be all done over would agree with me. My feeling is that when
: : setting up a new portfolio that this is the *first* decision to
: : be made: "Are you going to use a "real" cash account?" If so,
: : you need to start with that. : : The other area that I think would be really helpful would be a
: : discussion of the terminology in the EDIT ALL DATA field relating
: : to cash accounts. I found that entering the data for the actual
: : investments to be relatively intuitive. But, because you're using
: : the same forms for the cash account as for your investments even
: : though a (+) in one is a (-) in the other, I find that entering data
: : for the cash account to be very confusing. : : regards,
: : Tom : Hi Tom, : Thanks for the feedback on the tutorial, glad you found that useful.
: Regarding cash accounts, you only need to set up the cash account first
: if you want all your historical transactions to have corresponding entries
: in the cash account. Some people may also prefer to just start the cash
: account off with a certain balance on a day. : Which type of cash account entries are confusing, is it entering a new
: transaction in the cash account, or viewing the corresponding entry
: for some other transaction? : Thanks,
: Mark
: -- Hi Mark, You Said: "you only need to set up the cash account first if you want all your
historical transactions to have corresponding entries in the cash account" Sure, I imagine that lots of people *just* track their stocks/funds
and and don't try to make their FM portfolio an "accurate-to-the-penny"
copy of their brokerage act. *But* for those of that take advantage
of this ability of FM to do just that it's a frustrating experience
to learn by trial & error just how this needs to be configured
"correctly". *One* paragraph in the beginning of the tutorial (*and*
the "online" help file) would fix this. I can tell you that the first week
that I tried FM and had to completely configure FM *twice* (because I didn't
know that you have to *start* w/ the cash act) that I was *not* a happy camper.
Your name was taken in vain more than once. I would *not* have paid anybody
for this software at that point. Now, of course, you'd have to pry it out
of my cold, dead fingers! ;-) and also:
"Which type of cash account entries are confusing?" Entrys to the cash account that don't have a corresponding investment
transaction entry. For example an account transaction fee. The
"newbie" perspective on entering this info is: OK, FM is asking me
a "natural language" question: How much was the Account Fee? My
answer is $xx.xx (which is a positive #) The unthinking assumption
is: The underlying software will subtract this from the account
balance. But FM wants *me* to do the "transposing" (+ to -) This
is not intuitive. Same story w/ withdrawals (redemptions) from the
cash act. my $.02 Tom
: Mark Beiley
:
: Fund Manager for Windows 3.1x/95/98/NT
:
:
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