No relation between Investment Transaction and Portfolio: Rationale?

simpli_struggle

I know, there is no connection between Investment Value/Portfolio and Investment Transactions.

I am trying to understand: What's the rationale behind this? It doesn't make any sense to me, especially if I am maintaining a manual brokerage account.

Can someone explain to me: What use case does this solve?

Edit:
What I am trying to solve for myself is tracking cost basis of shares that I acquire from various sources (ESPP, RSU, Options etc.) Since these are in different brokerage houses and sometimes are transferred between brokerage houses - the cost basis information is lost.

I am trying to use Simplifi as an aggregator, which it is supposed to be. Am I expecting too much out of Simplifi? Should I look at some other product?

DannyB

@simpli_struggle

IMHO, yes, you are expecting too much out of Quicken Simplifi's current scope and abilities for handling investment accounts. I don't know if QS will ever rise to the level of sophistication that you are attempting. I suspect not. I also don't think the designers and developers have in mind the level of trading complexity that you are working with, but I certainly can't say for certain.

How have you tracked these transactions in the past? Sounds like you may need a program that is designed specifically for investment trading and tracking and not a personal budgeting app with an investment module "tacked" on, so-to-speak.

Coach Jon

Hello @simpli_struggle,

Thanks for reaching out! Since you stated that you are tracking your brokerage account manually, here is a great support article that explains how to track investments manually in Quicken Simplifi and how it works. https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/4474538-tracking-investments-in-quicken-simplifi

As far as tracking the cost basis of your holdings, as long as a valid ticker symbol is used for your investment holdings they should update automatically according to the current market stats. Learn more here!

I hope this helps!

-Coach Jon

simpli_struggle

Ok, let me ask with some pictures. Here are couple of screenshots of my manual brokerage account.

Transactions I entered manually

Now, what do I expect to see under Portfolio?

My gut feeling is, I should see total number of shares with average price as Cost Basis.

What do I really see? This…

Even for a simple budget tracking software - this is too much to ask?

Coach Jon

Hello @simpli_struggle,

The link I shared for the support article does go over how to add holdings manually within Quicken Simplifi. I would still suggest reading through that article as it does explain how to do investments manually.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/45888#Comment_45888

Thanks,

Coach Jon

simpli_struggle

Respectfully, @Coach Jon - I did read the article and the other linked articles from before creating this post.

As I said, in my 1st message - I know there is no connection between Holding and Transaction.

That leads me to the original question: What's the rationale behind creating it this way?

DannyB

I can't speak to the rationale but for now if you want to see the Portfolio screen populated you will need to add each holding manually.

Click on the + Holding button…

Fill out this form for each holding

You'll end up with…

RockLee

As @DannyB said, you will have too add your positions separate from transactions. Simplifi doesn't "tabulate" positions from your transactions, and I'm not aware of any Simplifi like products that will do that. Simplifi's investment section is very much a work in progress with several important shortcomings. For one, you will not be able to download your manually added transactions.

Max1223

@simpli_struggle @RockLee

As Rocklee states, I too feel like Investments is a wip. Beta at best.

Simpli_struggle, while this might not serve what you are looking for, at least it would continue to aggregate total amounts, hopefully with accuracy, sans individual transactions, where QS seems to have the most bugs.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/10982/simple-vs-complete-investment-tracking

DannyB

@simpli_struggle have you looked into Quicken Classic? The investment module in QC is much more robust then what QS is able to offer at this time or perhaps ever based on QS's underlying philosophy stated clearly in its name Quicken Simplifi.

Anyway, you may want to look at Quicken Classic to see if it would be a better fit with what you are doing with your investments.