[Kmymoney] Question re: investment entries from a new user of KMyMoney

Thu Oct 31 22:01:51 UTC 2013

On 2013.10.31 16:22, Jane Hadley wrote:

> Hello - I am switching from Quicken to KMyMoney. So far it looks as if
> KMyMoney will meet my needs except for this one issue I am having.
>
Great.

I am using KMyMoney 3.5.10 on a Ubuntu 10.04 Gnome desktop.
>
3.5.10 is the KDE version, not the KMyMoney version, which is hopefully
4.6.x but probably 4.5.x on that version of Ubuntu.  4.6.4 is the absolute
latest, but was only released very recently.  (However, unless this turns
out to be a bug which is fixed in a later version it shouldn't matter.

I have several mutual funds with Fidelity.  I set up a Fidelity account in
> KMyMoney. Then in the ledger, I did a "Buy Shares" and entered the number
> of shares and the price per share for my particular fund, say, Total Market
> Index. The ledger perfectly reflected this.
>
Did you do this in the Investment account?  Did the purchase amount get
appropriately removed from the Brokerage account?

I did do this in the Investment account. I do not have a Brokerage account.
I buy the mutual fund directly from Fidelity. For KMyMoney, I set up a
"Dummy" savings account and use that as the source of funds from which to
buy investment shares. (I have to do this kind of workaround in Quicken
too. A lot of times the money for investment purchases comes from my
husband's checking account and I do not keep his checking account in
Quicken or KMyMoney. So I use a Dummy account.)

That is, for example, it showed 245 shares at $10 a share and a total value
> of $2,450. It shows the "Balance" as being 245, so obviously "Balance" is a
> share balance, not a value balance.
>
That is correct.  Balances in Investment accounts are numbers of shares.
 However, there should be an "Investment Value" at the bottom of the
ledger, which should show the cash value of the investments.  Is that
showing $245 or $2,450.00?

The investment value at the bottom of the ledger showed everything
correctly. It showed the number of shares at 245, the price per share at
$10 and the total value at $2,450.

That's OK with me except that when you go to the Asset view or the Account
> view or the Net Worth report, the figures given are the share balances (the
> 245) not the value ($2,450). And they have dollar signs in front of them,
> which is obviously not appropriate for a share balance.
>
I think you are correct that those should really be cash value not share
counts.

The bar at the top of the Account view gives you a choice of tabs: Total
> Value or Total Balance. But both of these show the share balance: 245 for
> this mutual fund.
>
My account view has tabs for List and Icons.  Is this the Account View
select from the list of icons on the left?

I used the wrong terminology here. The "Total Value" or "Total Balance" I
referred to are not tabs but table column headers. You are correct that the
two tabs are List and Icons.

The Net Worth also uses the share balance. It shows a checking account
> balance of $1,200, which is correct, but then shows a mutual fund balance
> of $245, which is incorrect. The Total Market Index mutual fund balance
> should be $2,450 for a total net worth of $3,650, not $1,445. So obviously
> I am not getting a valid picture of the value of my assets.
>
This sounds like there is a wrong share value stored someplace.  Start by
going back to the Invesment account ledger and re-checking the transaction
for correct price-per-share.  If that is OK, select Tools/Prices... from
the menu.  Select the fund (you only have the one, right?) by entering
enough of its name in the search bar so it is the only fund showing, then
click "Show all stored prices."  I believe there should only be the
purchase price, unless you have added more.  Let us know if there is
anything extra here, such as a price of 1.

I think you hit the nail on the head here, Jack.  I have struggled to
understand the difference between "Account" and "mutual fund." So when I
first started to use KMyMoney, I was creating accounts for each Fidelity
mutual fund that I owned. I set the Opening Balance at the total value of
the fund that I owned. I then saw that KMyMoney had set the number of
shares to equal the total value and the price per share at 1. So I deleted
those accounts and set up a new Fidelity Account and then did "Buy Shares"
transactions in the ledger, which allowed me to set number of shares, price
per share and get a total value. That seemed to work except for this
particular issue of showing share balances instead of value elsewhere in
the program.

I followed your advice and clicked on "Investments" in the side panel. Once
I got to the Investments page, in the drop-down list toward the top left, I
selected my Fidelity account and it showed me the Total Market Index fund.
Interestingly, it gave no price and no total value but only the number of
shares. So I decided to do an online update to get a share price in there.
That worked. And now it is all working correctly: the Asset and Net Worth
views are showing total value instead of share balance. Or perhaps, I guess
I should say it is showing the correct total value -- i.e., one in which
the share price is not 1.

It was just strange to me because the ledger page showed a correct number
of shares, correct price per share, and correct total value, but it was not
being reflected elsewhere in the program (on the Accounts page or Net Worth
report).

Since the Opening Balances approach to setting up my mutual funds didn't
work, I used the "Buy Shares" approach to get my mutual fund balances,
prices, values into KMyMoney. I've used Quicken for probably 20 years with
numerous mutual funds during that time. I don't even want to think about
doing a QIF import, so I'm just giving up on my transaction history and
starting afresh in KMyMoney. I need to use it, because Quicken, of course,
requires Windows. I have been running Windows XP in a virtual machine on my
Ubuntu and that has worked fine, but Microsoft will soon cease supporting
Windows XP and I just don't want to have to go out and pay to install a
Windows 7 or certainly not Windows 8 virtual machine just so I can run
Quicken.

Thank you so much for your help, Jack! I am really impressed with the quick
and helpful response!  I will continue on my merry way with KMyMoney!

Jane

Where am I going wrong?
>
Not sure - but we'll help you figure it out.

Thanks for any help.
>
You're welcome.

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Jack <ostroffjh at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> On 2013.10.31 16:22, Jane Hadley wrote:
>
>> Hello - I am switching from Quicken to KMyMoney. So far it looks as if
>> KMyMoney will meet my needs except for this one issue I am having.
>>
> Great.
>
>
>  I am using KMyMoney 3.5.10 on a Ubuntu 10.04 Gnome desktop.
>>
> 3.5.10 is the KDE version, not the KMyMoney version, which is hopefully
> 4.6.x but probably 4.5.x on that version of Ubuntu.  4.6.4 is the absolute
> latest, but was only released very recently.  (However, unless this turns
> out to be a bug which is fixed in a later version it shouldn't matter.
>
>
>  I have several mutual funds with Fidelity.  I set up a Fidelity account
>> in KMyMoney. Then in the ledger, I did a "Buy Shares" and entered the
>> number of shares and the price per share for my particular fund, say, Total
>> Market Index. The ledger perfectly reflected this.
>>
> Did you do this in the Investment account?  Did the purchase amount get
> appropriately removed from the Brokerage account?
>
>
>  That is, for example, it showed 245 shares at $10 a share and a total
>> value of $2,450. It shows the "Balance" as being 245, so obviously
>> "Balance" is a share balance, not a value balance.
>>
> That is correct.  Balances in Investment accounts are numbers of shares.
>  However, there should be an "Investment Value" at the bottom of the
> ledger, which should show the cash value of the investments.  Is that
> showing $245 or $2,450.00?
>
>
>  That's OK with me except that when you go to the Asset view or the
>> Account view or the Net Worth report, the figures given are the share
>> balances (the 245) not the value ($2,450). And they have dollar signs in
>> front of them, which is obviously not appropriate for a share balance.
>>
> I think you are correct that those should really be cash value not share
> counts.
>
>
>  The bar at the top of the Account view gives you a choice of tabs: Total
>> Value or Total Balance. But both of these show the share balance: 245 for
>> this mutual fund.
>>
> My account view has tabs for List and Icons.  Is this the Account View
> select from the list of icons on the left?
>
>
>  The Net Worth also uses the share balance. It shows a checking account
>> balance of $1,200, which is correct, but then shows a mutual fund balance
>> of $245, which is incorrect. The Total Market Index mutual fund balance
>> should be $2,450 for a total net worth of $3,650, not $1,445. So obviously
>> I am not getting a valid picture of the value of my assets.
>>
> This sounds like there is a wrong share value stored someplace.  Start by
> going back to the Invesment account ledger and re-checking the transaction
> for correct price-per-share.  If that is OK, select Tools/Prices... from
> the menu.  Select the fund (you only have the one, right?) by entering
> enough of its name in the search bar so it is the only fund showing, then
> click "Show all stored prices."  I believe there should only be the
> purchase price, unless you have added more.  Let us know if there is
> anything extra here, such as a price of 1.
>
>
>  Where am I going wrong?
>>
> Not sure - but we'll help you figure it out.
>
>  Thanks for any help.
>>
> You're welcome.
>
> Jack
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> KMyMoney at kde.org
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>
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