Alternatives to Quicken (must run in Windows 2000)

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What are the alternatives to Intuit’s Quicken Premier 2007?
I was thinking about getting the critter until I saw the comments at Amazon.com.
Must run in Windows 2000, so MSFT Money is not an alternative.

Primary concern is investment transactions.

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I recommend: Personal Stock Monitor: Award-winning Investment Tracking Software

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Does look like a good product, but has a lot more than I need.

I’ll try to download the trial in April 2007.

One problem tho, Fidelity Investments no longer doeswdownloads in other than CSV format, unless you are allowing Quicken or MSFT Money to do the downloading.

OK, just checked the User Guide, CSV files can be imported.

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Just looked thru the User Guide.

I just want the record keeping, not the other stuff.

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Fund Manager also looks interesting.

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/%5B/url%5D

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Well, my instinct was kerect.

I finally finished entering the transactions for all of my sister’s
accounts and my account.

The Investment option is not ready for prime time:

1. Entering stuff in the register is buggy.
2. Some other errors may be the result of issues with Fidelity’s server, but
still not nice when transactions are skipped or coded wrong.
3. Summary pages are not accurate due to rounding.
4. Tried doing an Investment Performance report:

a. The incorrect total market value was used, i.e., $3030.65 less than the
market value on the Summary tab.
Why would not the value on the Summary tab be used. makes no sense?

b. I did not find a way to get annualized returns for each security in the
account.
5. did not see a way to compare average cost and actual ccost, might be
there, but the Help is inadequate.

So, after I do taxes, I’ll take a look at Fund Manager, Stock Monitor, etc.

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In my quest to postpone doing taxes, I more carefully investigated the info on the three products (Personal Stock Monitor, Portfolio Manager, and Fund Manager) at their web sites. For dealing with just mutual funds (it may also handle ETFs), based on reading the info, Fund Manager is the clear winner.

Heck, there’s even “documentation”!!
Most of my questions were answered merely by looking at the info at the web site and the screen shots provided.

Of course, I do not intend to download the trial until after I do taxes. but my flesh is weak, who knows what I might do in an impulsive moment.

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Hmm, can I really be satisfied with software tat makes me happy!? I need something to complain about!

Well, I can always pick on the poorly organized forum at http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/wwwboard/wwwboard.html%5B/url%5D!

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You could take a look at Money related freeware.
I’m sure you’ll find plenty to complain about there.

Alan

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Thanx.

To clarify, I’m looking for software that is strong in the investment area.

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Recently, I did a heck of a lot of trading in my sister’s taxable account,
so I thought that it might advantageous to get software that would determine
whether it would be better to use actual cost or average cost to compute
capital gains.

I’ve been disappointed that most, if not all, of the programs suffer from
the deficiencies described below. I’d be reluctant to trust their
calculations.

Are there portfolio management programs that do not suffer from the problems
described below? The comments are about FundManger, similar comments apply
to other programs.
————-
1. The total portfolio value is off by $.06 (too high). This is due to the
incorrect rounding of the market value for each security. Market values are
not to be rounded, they are always TRUNCATED to 2 digits to the right of the
decimal mark. You can see this at the Fidelity web site.

Such incorrect rounding accounts for $.05 of the error, the additional error
of $.01 results from the adding of the security values.

2. When a transaction is entered, IF both the number and shares and the
value are given, the price is irrelevant only of interest as an historical
item. It is incorrect to compute the price if the user manually enters the
price, or the price is downloaded from wherever.

For example, on 16 Sept 2005, the NAV of FSPTX used for a purchase was
$61.54. The amount purchased was $.97 resulting in the purchase of .016
shares. Fund Manager displays the price as $60.63. Manually correcting the
price does not stick.

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I do not believe that there is an industry standard for rounding dollars.

As recently as 24 Nov 2006, I did a transaction at Janus. Amount was ROUNDED UP, where Fido would have TRUNCATED.

Ditto for trades at AIM in 2005.

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Howard, I recently became aware of BasisPro via a TurboTax e-newsletter. I have no knowledge of or experience with it, you might want to throw it, or related GainsKeeper, on the wall to see if it sticks or slides off.

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The “al dente” software test?

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More like the Odd Couple, when Oscar flings a plate of Linguine and sauce made by Felix against the wall and says ‘Now it’s garbage’.

The difference between Genius and Stupidity:
A Genius knows their limits.
- Albert Einstein

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Actually, the “Howard K.Dent” software test. Howard, if you can’t find problems with it, it passes.

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It is all too trivial to find problems with such software.
In some cases, I have found outright bugs, e.g., at least one program is incorrectly calculating capital gains based on average cost basis
In other cases, the programs are victims of lack of standards for rounding amongst Fidelity, AIM, Janus, etc.
In other cases, well, I’, fed up enough to look into porting GnuCash.
At worst, I could have a private version that does what I want.

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Last time I looked at GnuCash, I don’t recall it having investment management capabilities. When is the stable Windows port being released?

Post back what you find about it to this thread.

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Stock and mutual fund accounts are listed as features.
I need to find out whether I can use C/C++ in VS .net, or whether I must download GCC or some other freebie C.
It is my understanding that the download for the Windows version, with source, is over 200MB.

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I just tried the Windows version of GnuCash.
I downloaded the most recent (unstable) binaries.
“Unstable” is an understatement.

I’ll have to try the more stable versions of Windows GnuCash.
I’ll let y’all know the outcome.

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Binaries are not available for earlier versions.
Version 1.8.5 is denoted as being stablem, but changes are occurring rapidly.

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Success, for at least one issue.

Found what I wanted.

In US Treasury regulations, Section 1.1012-1 of 26 CFR Ch, 1 (4-1-06 Edition), on page 39, right-hand column gives an example using rounding “to the nearest cent”.

So Fidelity is doing it right and certain financial software is wrong, i.e., wrong with respect to calculating average cost basis.

Took many hours of talking to IRS/Treasury attorneys and searching data bases.

I’ve reported this to two of the software products, let’s see how long it takes to get a fix.
Of course, by that time, my trial period will likely have expired for each program.

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Howard, since the IRS is fine with indivdual payers rounding each return line to the nearest dollar, they are going to tell you to waste someone else’s time about rounding to the cent. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040.pdf%5B/url%5D page 22.

For reference http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p550.pdf%5B/url%5D

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The rounding of items on return lines is not relevant.

When you calculate the average cost basis, say it turns out to be $77.70793806, you have to round to the nearest cent.
Say there are 1000 shares involved.

1. $77.71 results in a cost basis of $77710.
2. $78 results in a cost basis of $78000, i.e., reducing capital gains by $290.
3. Values between $77.71 and $78 have the obvious effect.

And even more shares exacerbates the issue of not properly rounding.

The intermediate calculation must be to the nearest cent as specified in the IRS regulation.
The final capital gan may be rounded to a whole dollar when entered in the return,

See example 1 on page 39 of the reg I cited.

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> See example 1 on page 39 of the reg I cited

You cited the location, you didn’t cite the actual CFR text. Since you didn’t cite the actual text, I thought you were talking about rounding the net gain or loss. In a brief review I could not find the CFR on-line, do you have a URL for CFR 26 in entirety?

If the programs you are looking at are rounding the per unit basis (cost) amounts or the per unit proceeds amounts to the penny, I wouldn’t use them. I don’t round the per unit cost or proceeds when I calculate gains and losses; I round only on the total basis and proceeds. However, since you

> Took many hours of talking to IRS/Treasury attorneys and searching data bases

you do it your way, and all the best to you.

(Unitl I see that CFR text, I’m guessing that “The intermediate calculation must be to the nearest cent as specified in the IRS regulation” is actually the per unit basis multiplied by the units traded, and the per unit proceeds multiplied by the units traded, but …)

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I am talking about rounding the average cost basis. to the total cost or the net gain.
I do not recall whether I copied the URL anyplace.

For purposes of US IRS, the average cost is to be rounded to 2 decimal places.
It is the average cost basis, i.e., the total cost divided by the number of shares that is to be rounded to two decimal places.

One has to follow the regs, lest one gets audited.

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They both are way too expensive.

I may look into getting involved with the Windows port of GnuCash.

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