Transaction Accuracy and Completeness
Transactions are a record of the activity that occurred in your portfolio - from the first deposit of funds or transfer of stock, through all of the sales, purchases, dividends, interest, fees and other activity that occurred since then. Your portfolio’s transactions are recorded in the Transactions report.
The list of transactions in the Transactions report should be as complete and accurate as possible. StockMarketEye uses the transactions from this report in a number of different situations, and the completeness and accuracy of the transactions affects the calculations that StockMarketEye makes. If there was activity in the portfolio that was not included in the Transactions report, or values in the Transactions report that are not consistent with the current holdings (Prices view), it will affect what you see in the Portfolio’s market value chart, Summary report and Back-in-Time report.
Where Will the Effects of Inaccurate or Incomplete Transactions be Visible?
Incomplete or inaccurate transactions will cause discrepancies in various places within StockMarketEye. One of the first places you may notice these discrepancies is in the Summary report. To compute performance values, StockMarketEye builds your portfolio from scratch using the transactions recorded in the Transactions report. If the transactions are not consistent with what actually happened in your portfolio, the performance numbers and balances will be off from what you’d expect.
Another place where StockMarketEye needs complete and accurate transactions is in the Back-in-Time report. Here again, the transactions are played forward in order to rebuild the portfolio on any given day in the past. If the transactions are not accurate or if there are missing transactions, the resulting back-in-time view will not be accurate.
If you notice discrepancies between your Portfolio's market value chart and the Prices view, this can be due to inaccurate or incomplete transactions. It may also be a sign that your Portfolio's Prices view has become out-of-sync with the transactions. An out-of-sync portfolio can be remedied by rebuilding the Prices view from the transactions.
StockMarketEye tries to correct for certain problems in the transactions when importing from a brokerage. This can cause placeholder transactions to be created. However, StockMarketEye can not automatically correct for all inaccurate data so it is best to double check your transactions for accuracy, whether they were entered by hand or imported from a brokerage or file.
How To Check Your Transactions for Accuracy and Completeness
If you see discrepancies between different reports, views or charts, you should verify the transactions to be sure that they are complete and accurate.
If your portfolio is small and has few transactions, you can simply go to the Transactions report and individually verify the transactions listed there. If you have a larger portfolio, see below for other techniques that you can use.
Some important fields/columns to verify in the Transactions report are:
- Date - The date on which the transaction occurred.
- NetTotal - The total value of the transaction, including costs.
- Costs & Fees - Any commissions or fees associated with the transaction.
- Currency & FX - If you are dealing with non-USD transactions and portfolios, you should verify that these columns are set appropriately.
- Cash Affected - Was the proceeds of the transaction applied to the cash balance of the Portfolio?
Those are the most common sources if discrepancies, but there are many other columns that you can check. Modification of any transaction can be done from within the Transactions report.
Locating Discrepancies Using the Back-in-Time Report
The Back-in-Time (BiT) report can be used to help locate discrepancies in your transactions. If you already have an idea of when the discrepancy entered into your portfolio, the best is to use the BiT report to go back in time to before that date and then move forward in time in the report to find the exact date when the discrepancy entered the portfolio.
If you are not sure when the discrepancy occurred, you can also use the Summary report to narrow down the time frame. Then, using the BiT report, go back in time, then move forward to narrow down the date.
The BiT report allows you do jump to any date in the past, so you can also jump by month or year till you can narrow down the date on which a discrepancy entered the portfolio.
Once you have the date of the discrepancy (or small range of dates within which the discrepancy occurred), you can go back to the Transactions report and use the date filter there to view only the transactions that occurred on or around the date. You'll then have a small list of transactions from which to choose, and can review and modify them as necessary.