Can you show "cash" in an investment account

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jasonhyland
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Can you show "cash" in an investment account

Post by jasonhyland »

Hi all,

I'm trying to setup mu opening balances for my various investment accounts (SIPP & ISA). Is it possible to hold cash against an investment account? For example in one of my investment accoutns I have a cash balance that was an incentive from the broker platform, but no current stock in it.

In my other ISA investment account, I have setup the share accounts that I hold, but the platform also hold a cash value from dividends etc. I assume I can record a deposit from the share account to record the dividend, but it doesn't seem to show the cash value in the investment account?

Excellent product, just trying to get my head around it :)

Thanks in advance for any help

Regards, Jason
siowena
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Re: Can you show "cash" in an investment account

Post by siowena »

Hi Jason,

In short, no it's not possible to have an account against an Investment account.

Investment accounts are just a placeholder for Share Investments and could be considered as a portfolio. When you set up a share investment, you also have the option of the Share Account, I recommend saying yes but it's a choice. These share accounts are little weird to use as they don't appear in the app by default (you have to enabled from menu) and many reports seem to ignore them but they do come out on the transaction report.

If you don't use share accounts, then the investment account will only hold headline information, it's also weird as the 1st transaction doesn't seem to take the money from anywhere so if you choose to not use share accounts then when you 1st add the share to the investment account enter only the company name and stock code and current price, zero the other values unless you aren't tracking where the funds came from. Once you have added the Share to the Investment, then you can add a transaction to the share which will allow you to identify where the funds came from or go to - usually the broker account.

The way I use the app is to set-up an Investment Account for the Broker/Portfolio and set-up a Bank or Cash Account for the Broker/Portfolio
Then I add Share/Investments into the Investment account (and create the share account), the account for purchase/sale is always the share account.

The reason it that the share account appears under the investment account in the nav tree and clicking it shows all the transactions in for the share account.
If you want to use share accounts, then all purchase, sale, dividends, charges/commission associated with that share goes into the share account. Only purchase & sale can be done from the investment/share screens. The rest has to open the share account directly (menu option to show them).
You then transfer (cash sweep some brokers call it) any residual cash to the broker's account. General management fees charged by the broker go into the broker's account as it's not really worth it to calc the % charge per share.
There an overhead in this method as you needs to transfer the monies around but you can easily see all transactions for that share by clicking on the share in the investments section of the app (navigation panel).
Once it's set-up, then I set-up some scheduled transactions for regular transactions (e.g. dividends, annual/quarterly fees) and the transfer from share account to broker account.

Alternatively you can have all transactions coming into/out of the broker's account and therefore see everything in one place. To look at at an individual share you have do some form of filtering.

Advise you to create a payee for each share you invest in and this is the payee on all purchase/sale/dividends/etc. it'll also allow you to filter easier. Also set-up category for Shares and subcategories for Purchase, Sale, Dividends, Fees, Charges.
ShareInv1 has share account, ShareInv2 & 3 don't
ShareInv1 has share account, ShareInv2 & 3 don't
Screenshot 2020-07-31 at 2.55.45 PM.png (82.1 KiB) Viewed 16051 times
Mik
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Re: Can you show "cash" in an investment account

Post by Mik »

I connect to this thread to ask this question
viewtopic.php?p=17086#p17086
you can deposit money to a share account, but not into a broker account. Problem is a share account it's not really an account per se, it should just hold the shares buy/sell operations. It can't have cash in it.
What actually have cash in it is the broker account that instead is unable to accept deposits.

When I buy a stock I use the cash from the broker, not from my checking account. But this is not possible to do in MMEX. Why?

Also the dividend are shown as 'deposit' into the share account, but those money go in fact into the broker account.

Can someone clarify?
Thanks in advance.
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Renato
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Re: Can you show "cash" in an investment account

Post by Renato »

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Mik
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Re: Can you show "cash" in an investment account

Post by Mik »

The discussion about the assets is actually applicable to Shares as well.
Let me suggest a couple of ways this could be handle.
  • Investement accounts should be able to have deposit/withdrawal/transfer in cash and shares.
    A summary page can give an overview of the current holdings and their values
  • As it is now, investment accounts hold share accounts, that force the user to create a term account for each broker to manage the associated cash
    but at least MMEX could automate the double entry required

    a. when you create an Investment account "MyBroker" it automatically create a Term Account "MyBroker-Acc"
    b. when I buy/sell/dividend a stock it automatically create the corresponding cash transaction in the Term Account

    this way it won't require changes on the db and little on the code but at least users don't need to double key every transaction
Does any of this make sense?

Refer also to viewtopic.php?p=22521#p22521
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