Another Advanced Portfoio update

[Mike Alexander]

--On February 16, 2014 7:47:41 PM +1100 Chris Good 
<chris.good at ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> New report is much better! Everything is perfect except for Money In.
> For a stock I have which just has 2 transactions (initial purchase +
> DRP with an increase in Residual), I can see Money In is correct
> being just the cost of the initial stock purchase.
> But for another stock which has 3 DRPs, 2 increasing residual and 1
> decreasing residual, the Money In is close to what I expect (Ie the
> cost of the initial shares + the cost of the DRP share allocation,
> but it is a few dollars out, and I cannot figure out a combination of
> values to explain it.
>
> If you still have the TEST database I sent you, with the transactions
> for BOQ, could you please run your new report on it and check out
> Money In?

I still have that test file and use it regularly to test my changes.

I assume that you see money in that is 2.53 too high in the report on 
that account.  This is because the transaction on 9 Dec 2012 transfers 
4.52 to the DRP Residual asset account and the transaction on 26 May 
2013 transfers 2.53 back to round up the purchase to an even number of 
shares.  The report considers each transaction separately and makes no 
connection between these two.  Hence the 2.53 looks like money in.  If 
this is not what you're seeing then most of what I saw below is 
irrelevant.

Contrast this with another investment I had once upon a time where 
dividends were also reinvested.  I could also add cash to the 
reinvestment account which would be added to the next dividend to 
purchase more shares.  At first glance this looks much like your 
account, but the money I added didn't come from a previous dividend and 
should be considered money in.

I can think of two ways to distinguish these cases, neither of which I 
like all that much.  I could assume that money transfered to an asset 
account as part of a reinvestment transaction (one that has both income 
and shares purchase) is being transfered to a DRP holding account.  As 
long as the net transfer to the account is positive, I could assume 
that there is no money in to the stock account as a result of these 
transactions.

The other possibility is to ignore any money transfered into an 
reinvestment transaction so long as it was less than the cost of one 
share.  If this money came from something other than a previous 
dividend, then this would be the wrong thing to do.

I like the first of these better and I'll think about implementing some 
like this unless someone has a better idea.

                 Mike