Page 1 of 1

Assets - what am I doing wrong?!

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 3:09 pm
by aardvark1
Hi, I am an MMEX newbie and am struggling with assets.  I should add that I am not especially strong in financial theory either, which is partly why I want to use MMEX to get better control over my finances.

I understand that clicking on the Assets header in the navigation panel shows the assets themselves, with their properties, and that underneath the Assets header in the navigation panel are the accounts corresponding to those assets; I feel that is perhaps not intuitive and rather different from how portfolios and stocks are displayed and I would argue that a separate list for each might be better, one labelled "assets" and the other "asset accounts".  But that is a very minor point and perhaps I am misunderstanding something.

My questions are:

(1) I don't understand the difference between the value entered for the asset when it is created and the initial balance entered when one creates a corresponding asset account - could someone explain please?  When setting up the asset one is invited to enter the inital value.  But this value appears to be overwriiten by the value entered in the initial transaction dialogue (which comes up after the creation of the account).  So is this field on the asset only useful if one does not create an account for the asset?

(3) Asset transactions set up by clicking "add transaction" against the asset always have a status of Reconciled, which cannot be change; and they always have a 2-part dialogue, with asset details in the left panel and transaction details in the right panel.  By contrast transactions created against the asset account do not have the asset details, and status can be anything.  I do not understand why the two should be different, can someone explain please?

(4) and if we click on the asset and say view transactions, it only shows the ones created against the asset; whereas if we look at the asset account it shows all transactions.

(5)  The asset value then gets out of kilter with the asset account value.  E.g. I created an asset with an initial value of 1000.  I created an account for it, and entered 3000 as the initial amount.  I cancelled out of the transaction creation dialogue.  The asset shows a value of 1000, and the asset account shows a value of 3000.  The asset value on takes into account transactions created against the asset. So what should I use each for, if they can have different values?

(6) Am I correct in thinking that one would - generally - only create an asset without a corresponding asset account if one never expected the asset to change (to sell of part of the asset, say), i.e. if we did not expect to have any transactions against it other than an initial one that created (funded) it?

(7) A deposit transaction against the asset account (showing as a positive increase in the account balance) seems to show as a negative amount against the asset itself - I do not understand this?

Many thanks for any help.

Re: Assets - what am I doing wrong?!

Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 5:26 pm
by aardvark1
Can no-one help me with this?  Apologies my post was rather long but would appreciate any help in understanding this function.

Re: Assets - what am I doing wrong?!

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2018 10:39 am
by tycariadus
Did you ever get a response to this? I too am struggling with this. I've set up an asset account and created an initial balance and then nothing appears in the summary / net worth? Can someone provide better guidance here?