ash83
Posts: 33 
Likes: 13
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Post by ash83 on Jan 10, 2019 9:47:20 GMT
Hi All,
I have tried a couple of diffrent approches for tracking my investments (including P2P Lending, Buy To Let properties and some stocks), however none of them are convinient/user friendly and also as detailed as I want them to be!
My first approch was to use spreadsheets so I simply put all diffrent investments and their returns in diffrent sheets and created a dashboard as well. however this is not good enough when you want to track the history of your investments (or at least not the way that I was doing it).
in my second try I downloaded trial version of Banktivity V7+ (Mac software) and tried using it however that as well failed me! specially when it comes to investment properties.
What do you use, which you can recommend? Is there a gap in the market here for a clever software developer to come in and create a Software as a Service (or offline version)?
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JamesFrance
Member of DD Central
Port Grimaud 1974
Posts: 1,323
Likes: 897
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Post by JamesFrance on Jan 10, 2019 11:36:23 GMT
I use a program called Quicken which records all financial transactions with bank accounts and produces tax reports and covers investment tracking. Unfortunately it was discontinued in 2004 but still works on win10. Try searching for a modern equivalent.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2019 12:47:26 GMT
I hold assets over multiple platforms and types. To bring them all together I:
1) use londonstockexchange for UK shares and Trusts, this offers signals for free, along with rns etc
2) use marketwatch.com for USA shares, this offers signals for free
3) ii.co.uk the watchlist to bring together funds, which I then plot manually on a spreadsheet each against my target plan, I use ii as a portal so this element is free
4) P2P I just monitor the top line figures for each portal and compare that against target interest rates on a spreadsheet. I don't bother with the details, but I do download my list of loans from each portal into a file which I then ignore as protection against another COL collapse.
5) I use OpenOffice which is a free spreadsheet
This, of course, leaves multiple assets out of the system and I just ignore them until I do an annual review.
I find as long as I maintain a better than 8% growth figure (with a target 11%), after cost of living expenses and tax year on year over a long period I'm happy.
Knowing what is happening to your particular loans is probably a poor use of your time. It is probably better to focus on overall economic events and changes to legal situations. Though I would advise against investing in boats or wine :-)
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ash83
Posts: 33
Likes: 13
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Post by ash83 on Jan 11, 2019 9:24:42 GMT
boats, wine and Collateral (which unfortunately looks like a lot of us are trapped in at the moment!)
Thanks both, I will look into what you're suggesting and also report back if I find anything more usrefriendly!
@bobo: I agree measuring each individual loan probably isn't the best use of time/resources.
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Post by failedtheturingtest on Jan 11, 2019 13:26:08 GMT
I use a spreadsheet to track the values of each of my investments (most of which are stock ETFs and funds, not P2P).
I invest fairly passively, so I deliberately don't track too much information, in order to help discourage me from acting rashly and trading too often. ("Don't just do something, stand there!").
In P2P I track the value and rate of return of each platform, but not individual loans within each platform. I track my overall allocation mix (which is very important to me) by asset class, by country, and by industry sector. I chart the overall value of the portfolio to give myself warm fuzzies. I track my spending and do (rudimentary) projections to see whether I'm likely to survive retirement or not.
My biggest mistake, I think, was putting it on Google Docs where I can access it on my phone. I look at it way too often!
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james100
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,086
Likes: 1,288
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Post by james100 on Jan 11, 2019 14:21:01 GMT
Google sheets custom build for me. Front end is portfolio overview with key data inc. asset class actuals v target, total value in multiple currencies per the day's forex rates, income pm, capital gains total that need to be rinsed, gbp v non-gbp assets.
I won't bore you with details, but data for equities, bonds, gold, currencies etc automatically ripped off exchanges in near-real time via google, yahoo etc. with value totals and CGT calculated from contract note records which I input on purchase (updates average cost itself) and other stuff scraped off morningstar, HL etc since I use the system for decision making and not just tracking... I get an email when asset classes need to be rebalanced otherwise just a pdf backup of the entire set of records every Monday 8am +/- 15 mins. Rolling tax liability forecasts for the portfolio as it stands according to HMRC buckets of dividend v income. P2P is detailed but reflects transactions, risk management data (% platform, loan, sectors, tie-up times) and is not work intensive as I was always into buy to hold investments and am much less active in P2P than I used to be...also has secondary market screeners for a couple of platforms all linking back to portfolio targets and risk parameters. Used to have a section for investment property and it worked in similar way.
The key constraint I have is time to call up functions for equity analysis in the volume I want them (lots) without freezing, so I'm rebuilding the whole thing this year with more efficient automation for that section and will probably streamline.
My needs are quite complex though, so if you are looking to build yourself something more manageable and know exactly what you want I'd be happy to point you in the right direction.
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Post by Ace on Jan 11, 2019 15:10:37 GMT
Google sheets custom build for me. Front end is portfolio overview with key data inc. asset class actuals v target, total value in multiple currencies per the day's forex rates, income pm, capital gains total that need to be rinsed, gbp v non-gbp assets. I won't bore you with details, but data for equities, bonds, gold, currencies etc automatically ripped off exchanges in near-real time via google, yahoo etc. with value totals and CGT calculated from contract note records which I input on purchase (updates average cost itself) and other stuff scraped off morningstar, HL etc since I use the system for decision making and not just tracking... I get an email when asset classes need to be rebalanced otherwise just a pdf backup of the entire set of records every Monday 8am +/- 15 mins. Rolling tax liability forecasts for the portfolio as it stands according to HMRC buckets of dividend v income. P2P is detailed but reflects transactions, risk management data (% platform, loan, sectors, tie-up times) and is not work intensive as I was always into buy to hold investments and am much less active in P2P than I used to be...also has secondary market screeners for a couple of platforms all linking back to portfolio targets and risk parameters. Used to have a section for investment property and it worked in similar way. The key constraint I have is time to call up functions for equity analysis in the volume I want them (lots) without freezing, so I'm rebuilding the whole thing this year with more efficient automation for that section and will probably streamline. My needs are quite complex though, so if you are looking to build yourself something more manageable and know exactly what you want I'd be happy to point you in the right direction. Wow, that sounds amazing! I need one, well.. the bits I understood anyway. I suppose i don't really need one, but I sure as hell want one. If you create an Android app to do half of that, I'm in đź‘Ť
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ash83
Posts: 33
Likes: 13
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Post by ash83 on Jan 15, 2019 10:31:29 GMT
james100 This sounds amazing! Is it possible to share any of it (i.e. the google sheets table). It looks like you know exactly what's needed and have implemented it, Where I have a vague idea of what I want but not much details!
Would you be intrested to discuss this any further and maybe make an open source (or even SAAS) project out of it together? I'm a software developer and know couple other developers who might be intrested to help.
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Post by beepbeepimajeep on Jan 21, 2019 21:05:16 GMT
With notepad.exe and calc.exe, come at me
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hazellend
Member of DD Central
Posts: 2,363
Likes: 2,180
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Post by hazellend on Jan 21, 2019 21:23:08 GMT
I don’t really track mine. Too lazy and all my investments are long term so I don’t really care too much. Once a year I do a net worth calculation.
Edit: my equity “portfolio” consists of one ETF in all our accounts (VWRL) so simple to check if I want to
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gibmike
Member of DD Central
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Posts: 256
Likes: 160
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Post by gibmike on Jan 21, 2019 23:03:00 GMT
I use trusty excel and track everything in a couple of simple tables:
Year by Year
Current year % profit (or loss)
Annualised return (only for P2P)
This gives me a few simple numbers:
- what i have made and lost by platform - what my target return is and how far away i am - what my future return could be
I update it a few times a week and use it to move money around on a monthly basis.
Worked for me for the last 2.5 years and I don't think any program could replicate it with more information than I need.
Mike
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Post by beepbeepimajeep on Jan 22, 2019 0:07:05 GMT
Google sheets custom build for me. Front end is portfolio overview with key data inc. asset class actuals v target, total value in multiple currencies per the day's forex rates, income pm, capital gains total that need to be rinsed, gbp v non-gbp assets. I won't bore you with details, but data for equities, bonds, gold, currencies etc automatically ripped off exchanges in near-real time via google, yahoo etc. with value totals and CGT calculated from contract note records which I input on purchase (updates average cost itself) and other stuff scraped off morningstar, HL etc since I use the system for decision making and not just tracking... I get an email when asset classes need to be rebalanced otherwise just a pdf backup of the entire set of records every Monday 8am +/- 15 mins. Rolling tax liability forecasts for the portfolio as it stands according to HMRC buckets of dividend v income. P2P is detailed but reflects transactions, risk management data (% platform, loan, sectors, tie-up times) and is not work intensive as I was always into buy to hold investments and am much less active in P2P than I used to be...also has secondary market screeners for a couple of platforms all linking back to portfolio targets and risk parameters. Used to have a section for investment property and it worked in similar way. The key constraint I have is time to call up functions for equity analysis in the volume I want them (lots) without freezing, so I'm rebuilding the whole thing this year with more efficient automation for that section and will probably streamline. 
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cobi
Member of DD Central
Posts: 77
Likes: 80
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Post by cobi on Jan 23, 2019 16:13:30 GMT
I also use Google sheets for P2P. I have some python scripts and chrome extensions which get my account data and save automatically to google sheets with daily snapshots. Allows me to see defaults, recoveries and repayments without having to manually log into different sites/accounts. For equities/units trusts I have a Google sheet with live data and automated snap shots daily. For bank accounts I use www.moneydashboard.com/It is very useful for searching transactions |
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Post by Ace on Jan 23, 2019 17:35:25 GMT
Hi cobi, I'd like to do something similar for my p2p accounts in Google sheets. I'd appreciate any pointers as to how to get started. I'm an ex-softie (retired a few years back) so shouldn't need to be spoon fed too much. |
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xtab
Posts: 41
Likes: 34
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Post by xtab on Jan 24, 2019 7:56:39 GMT
I too use Excel for the whole range of investments, broken into notional sections based on high to no risk categories. Then various sheets keep track of interest, performance (especially claimed % vs real returns). P2P only tracks platform totals. I did initially try and track individual loans but it soon got to be way too much work for the relative usefulness.
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