16

Transactions / Tracking Equity Options within Investment Account Manager

« on: August 16, 2018, 01:55:35 PM »

IAM WITH EQUITY OPTIONS
Equity options are contracts between buyers and sellers providing certain rights or responsibilities on the opposite parties. It is beyond the scope of this manual to explain the mechanics of option trading, but for those interested in learning about using options as investments, visit the CBOE website User Guide: http://www.cboe.com/aboutcboe/cboe-com-user-guide

IAM can track the following:
Opening Buy: An Opening Buy transaction is a purchase (going long) of the option. Opening buys enable you to control the rights on shares of an underlying security, providing the right to purchase (call) or sell (put) at a pre-defined exercise price on or before the expiration date. Opening buy transactions are followed by: a closing sale, the exercised rights, or expire worthless.

Closing Sale: A Closing Sale transaction is the sale of a previously purchased (opening buy) call or put option.

Opening Sale: An Opening Sale transaction gives is the sale of option rights to someone else. This is also known as writing (or granting) the option. You are 'selling' the right to buy from you (i.e. call away) or sell to you (i.e. put to you) the underlying security at the strike price and shares per contract on or before the expiration date. An opening sale is treated as a 'short' position on Portfolio Manger reports and is shown as a negative quantity.

Closing Buy: A Closing Buy transaction is the purchase of a previously sold (opening sale) call or put option.

Assignments, exercises, expiration of Options: all of these transactions, and their required tax adjustments, are handled within Investment Account Manager.

17

Reporting / Collective Reporting with Investment Account Manager

« on: August 16, 2018, 01:36:24 PM »

The Ability to combine your portfolios on Investment Account Manager's many reports is a powerful feature. In order for any portfolio management tool to be effective, it is essential to thoroughly provide a collective understanding of how your portfolios are integrated, and how the overlap. This information will allow you to analyze important questions:

1). Collectively, am I over/under allocated?
2). Am I diversified?
3). Do I hold concentrated positions?
4). Are the securities I own held in the right accounts — i.e., in deferred vs. taxable?

Investment Account Manager allows users to track an unlimited number of portfolios, each in its unique database file, transactions are segregated by account. This provides the user the ability to design portfolios by objective, and to track by individual investment account.

For Unified Account Management purposes, IAM helps allows the combination of portfolios on the program's many reports. This powerful ability keeps the user focused on multiple investment accounts relate.

If for example, you have both tax deferred and currently taxable accounts within Investment Account Manager, and you were interested in better understanding the overall asset allocation of all of your holdings, you would select Investment Account Manager's Asset Allocation Report and include all of your portfolios on that report using the report setup screen. Within seconds, Investment Account Manager will produce a report showing your combined portfolios' allocation by asset class (cash, bonds, stocks and other), by stock industry sector, and by stock size (large, medium or small cap).

18

Frequently Asked Questions / Understanding IAM's Historical Price Libary

« on: August 16, 2018, 12:57:14 PM »

Historic Prices

The Historic Prices library stores the historical security data. enabling users to recreate portfolios as of a specific date. for instance, you might want to review your portfolio as of past date, or review a from-to report.

Price history, earnings, dividends, etc. are maintained in the historic library, and users can derive reports for the historic date to derive portfolio values, performance, etc. After you have created historical prices for a date in this library, that date will be available for reporting.

Historic Price Library organizes all the information for securities stored for an as-of-date entry. Columns can be sorted by left double-clicking a column header, or moved by using a single left-click of the mouse and then dragging the column to a new location. The Look For window allows users to search for a specific item in the left-hand column.  You can filter the Historic Asset Library to show all securities, or filter by specific portfolio by clicking the drop down arrow to the right of the filter box, selecting the portfolio, and then selecting the Go! Button.

Add New Date: use this choice to create an as-of-date entry. Users are prompted to enter a date, and Investment Account Manager will then cross-references all portfolios to determine which assets owned on the date entered. After the historic library has been created for this date, Investment Account Manager will connect to the Internet and attempt to retrieve prices for the date. For each date created, Investment Account Manager will use the information currently stored in the current library data to update the historic library. Prices will be retrieved for the historic date, and any prices not found will be returned with a market price of $1. These will need to be manually updated by the user.

Important Note: when creating month end historic price dates, always use the calendar month end date.  Investment Account Manager will find the proper prices for the most recent market closing date, and store the prices using the calendar date.  This is required for deriving month end portfolio performance returns.

Delete Old Date: use this choice to remove an as-of-date entry from the historical prices library.

Default Settings: use this choice to reset the historic prices table to default column widths and order.

Delete All History: use this choice to clear all stored historic price dates.  New users should use this choice to delete all sample historic price dates included with the Investment Account Manager demo version sample data prior to creating historic dates for their own investment portfolios.

Update Prices: use this choice to update prices for the historic date using the Internet. Be sure to check prices returned. It is also used to re-update prices in the event securities are added after the last update.

Export: use this choice to export an existing historic price date to a file. This permits the user to create a historic price file for use on another system. The file is in comma separated format (csv) providing symbol, date, price, dividend, earnings, and beta (as found in the asset library).

Print: use this button to print the Historic Price library information. Securities are organized on this report based on the column sort order last selected by the user. To sort columns, left double-click on a column header. For example, if you want to organize this report based on past price/earnings ratios, use a left-double click on this column.

Delete: use this button to delete individual assets from the Historic Price library. Do not remove an asset from the historic list if the asset was held in any portfolio as of the date. Removing this security will result in inaccurate historical reports for the as-of-date.

Add: use this button to manually add assets directly to the list to reflect securities owned in portfolios for the historic as-of-date entry. Important Note: if you have already created the prior year-end historic price date for the year-to-date range, but then enter purchase activity for a new asset to this portfolio for this prior year (out of sequence), be certain to update the stored price in the Historic Price Library for this prior year-end date. The priced used for performance will reflect $1.00 unless this issue was previously entered to the historic price file.

The Edit/Update Tab shows the security information for the highlighted asset in the historic asset list tab. Users can edit on this tab the existing information as necessary. Also provided is a link to the Yahoo! Finance Historical Quotes page for the selected issue.

Use the Save button to record changes.

Use Cancel to ignore changes.

Important: Anytime you add purchase transactions proceeding the dates found in your existing historic asset library, the security involved is added to all the required libraries with a $1.00 price. Either manually change the price, or use the update prices to retrieve via the Internet.

19

Frequently Asked Questions / Understanding IAM's Current Asset Libary

« on: August 16, 2018, 12:29:30 PM »

IAM's Current Asset Library
As you create and add transactions to portfolios, Investment Account Manager automatically populates the Current Asset Library database. This asset library is utilized by the program to store shared asset-descriptive information, such as name, type, current market price, dividend rate per share, etc. If multiple portfolios own the same asset, the asset-descriptive information is readily available, and other portfolios can then share this information, eliminating keystroke redundancy.

The Current Asset Library stores the most recent asset information that is shared globally by portfolios. This current data is used for deriving values, reports, etc. on current reports (versus historical reporting). The Current Asset List Tab displays (in table format) all the securities currently included in the Investment Account Manager current asset library.

To manually edit or update a security, simply left double-click on that security in the grid. This facilitates name changes, symbol changes, fundamental data updates, etc.

The table can be resorted on a specific column.
Point your mouse to any column heading, the appearance of your mouse will change to a "downward pointing arrow". By left double-clicking your mouse on the column header (or moved by using a single left-click of the mouse and then dragging the column to a new location) you can change the sort order of the table. For example, left double-click on the yield column which will position this as the left hand column. Sort the Current Asset List in either Ascending or Descending order by selecting the appropriate radial dial. The list will be resorted, based on the far-left column field, in either ascending or descending order.

You can filter the Master Asset Library to show all securities in the current asset library, or filter by specific portfolio by clicking the drop down arrow to the right of the filter box, selecting the portfolio, and then selecting the Go! Button.

Use the Default Settings button to restore the asset library table to pre-defined column widths and order.

Print Library: use this button to print a list of assets in the current asset library.

Internet Research: immediately access the Internet for free stock research and news. You can find fundamental variables, recent quotes, industry classifications, company news, technical analysis and much more for the currently selected security.

Delete Not Held: The Delete Not Held Assets feature will "clean-up" your Current Asset List. This feature scans the system, showing those assets without any Current Position records, in any of your portfolios. These assets can then be marked as necessary for deletion. Tip: even though an asset is removed from the Current Asset List, portfolio transaction records (sale, income, original, etc.) recorded in individual portfolio(s) are retained in the portfolio(s). These records are maintained for proper reporting. Deleting from the Master will not affect historical portfolio transaction records.
 
Add: use this button to add securities to the current asset library. You can use this feature to add securities to the list which are not held in any of your portfolios.

20

Support / Using IAM's Utility Program to Repair the Program

« on: August 16, 2018, 11:30:42 AM »

Investment Account Manager's Utility Program is designed to fix problems that might occur when an error is caused by abnormal shut-down, conflict with another program such as a firewall or anti-virus, etc. The utilities repairs these types of issues, as well as providing solutions to other issues.

To access the Utility Program:

Close IAM if it is open.
Select Windows Start Menu | then all apps (programs).
Find the Investment Account Manager 3 program group and open it.
Within the program group, click on IAM3 Utilities.

The following repair utilities are available:

Backup Data: This utility allows you to backup your data from outside IAM. Useful if you cannot open IAM, and do not have a recent backup.

Delete Backup Directories: This will delete the backup directories that you choose. Useful if you wish to cleanup your backup folder. Backups are sorted by date.

Fix Portfolio Memo Fields: If you are getting an error that shows that the memo file is missing or invalid, run this utility. This is error 41.

Pak and Re-index Database: Packing files removes deleted records and compacts notes and data. This will reduce the size of the files and speed up the program.

Portfolio Diagnostic: This diagnostic tool will scan all portfolios in Investment Account Manager, identifying discrepancies between the quantity shown on reports and the quantity calculated on the Portfolio Activity Ledger.

Register Crystal Controls: If you can't get reports to display, you may need to re-register the Crystal Reports controls. This program should find the correct directory to register these controls. You must have administrator privileges to register these controls. When starting the utility program, right-click and choose "Run as Admin".

Register OLE Controls (run as administrator): Re-register all of the OLE (object linking and embedding system to link databases and programs) controls. You must have administrator privileges to register OLE controls. When starting the utility program, right-click and choose "Run as Admin". If the IAM's calculator tool and/or calculator aren't working.

Remove Your Password: This will remove the password from the Investment Account Manager program.

Repair Corrupted Files: If you can't open the program because the program says that it is already running, this should correct the problem. It will also fix other database problems that might prevent you from opening IAM3.

Repair Database: If your program will not open and you get a message that says "File ... rk.dbc does not exist", this might fix the database. It will also fix other database problems that might prevent you from opening IAM3. NOTE: It will not work if you have never packed your database.

Update Program: If you downloaded a newer version of the program, but the program will not update because it is installed under \Program Files, use this program to install the update.

NOTE: You must change the "Unzip to Folder" to the directory where your Investment Account Manager program was installed.

View Error Log: If a program error occurs while using Investment Account Manager, an entry of the error is automatically created in the error log. Any error can be printed or saved to your clipboard to send to technical support.



 

21

Reporting / Batch Reporting with Investment Account Manager

« on: August 16, 2018, 11:05:02 AM »

Batch Reporting
 
The Batch Reporting feature allows users to produce a series of reports for a selected list of portfolios.  Users can define which portfolios to include, and what reports, for specific time periods.

Select Portfolios: select the portfolio(s) to be used for the batch reporting process.  Use the Mark All or Clear All button to select/clear portfolios.

Select Reports: select reports to be used for the batch reporting process.  Use the Mark All or Clear All button to select/clear reports.

Report Period: depending on the selected report, users can select the reporting period for the batch reporting process.  This includes All Dates, Predefined Date Ranges, Custom Date Ranges, or As of Date. 

Start Date: starting date range for selected report period.

End Date: ending date range for selected reporting period.

Report Choice: depending on the selected report, check the additional reporting option as available.  These include: By Monthly Totals, By Holding Period, and Exclude Options. 

Margins: set report margins.

Include Printer Setup: use this option to be prompted with the printer setup dialogue form prior to printing reports. You'll be able to select a specific printer, quality preferences, and other printer options.

Preview Reports: use this option to view a preview of the report prior to printing.

Export to PDF: use this option to create PDF output of the selected batch report(s).