Which online portfolio management site?

zaspa

I have several portfolios set up on trustnet and I like the site.

However it does not provide any of the following;

1. Ability to log cash inflow and outflow over time
2. Record historic transactions (ie investments I have sold and relaised a gain/loss)
3. Track the IRR over time of my investment portfolio (it just gives a snapshot of what I hold today)
4. Ability to record dividends and their reinvestment
5. Enable me to work out when I have used my CGT allowance (or not..)

I had a look at Google Finance - this has some of the above abilities but didn't list some of the funds I own (doesn't seem to be full UK enabled). I see some more advanced (but US-centric) sites listed on the web, couldn't find any UK ones.

Could I ask how others track their investments and which sites you use? Or do people rely on spreadsheets...

(My wife and I use 3 different brokers - HL, Cavendish and Alliance Trust) so its helpful consolidating the information somewhere.

Thanks
Z

JohnRo

I haven't found any that manage to accurately track an investment account to the penny, which they really ought to if the unit prices are universal. It's a real shame because trustnet and morning star provide useful presentations of portfolio data.

I just use the actual investment account portal itself (charles stanley) and a personal spreadsheet now. It's a bit of a faff though but it pleases the nerd in me.

Shaolin_Monkey

I use Sharescope which is paid for software. I think it does all of the things you want and is UK focussed. The basic "Gold" version includes all of the portfolio management features - the more expensive ones just add real time data which is irrelevant for funds. A trial is available so you can try it with no obligation.

A few disadvantages are that while it automatically knows when dividends are paid on UK shares and can be set to add them to your accounts automatically, it does not do the same for funds, ETF's, preference shares or fixed income etc. They have to be manually added. Re-investments always have to be manually recorded. Likewise the adjustments that happen sometimes with funds (equalisation payments, tax reclaims on FI funds in ISA etc.) need to be accounted for manually if you want it to match your brokers accounts "to the penny".

zaspa

I looked at Sharescope - it's just a bit expensive for me. Was wondering if there are cheaper alternatives.

Thanks for the advice.

bowlhead99

Shaolin_Monkey wrote: »

I use Sharescope which is paid for software. I think it does all of the things you want and is UK focussed. The basic "Gold" version includes all of the portfolio management features - the more expensive ones just add real time data which is irrelevant for funds. A trial is available so you can try it with no obligation.

That's interesting- I see it does shares for UK/US, and also UTs/Oeics, which should cover my portfolio.

At the moment I'm simply dumping portfolio cost/value summaries together with a list of dated cashflows, exported from my brokers/platforms into a custom spreadsheet. It gives me a lot of flexibiity in reporting multiples and IRRs and grouping together fund types or share types or sectors, and tracking income/gain etc. Each of the free online portfolio tools I found was flawed in some way in terms of what it could report or what prices it was able to track or what date range I can review.

The problem with the spreadsheet method is it's higher maintenance and more manual than I'd like. On the one hand, I work hard and value my free time and so paying someone else a monthly fee to update my data on a daily basis, rather than me having to manually export all my prices from my brokers as frequently as I want data points on my graphs, sounds like a win. I might not really miss the £4 or £5 a week for a Sharescope entry level subscription. and may find some entertainment in the technical graphing and analysis tools for individual stocks.

But when I see the overall price in the region of £200 p.a., I can do the maths and realise this means that the returns of £4000 of my assets at say 5% p.a. are now lost because they are dedicated to buying me this data subscription. That's a hard price to swallow given I've coped OK to date.

But thanks for the pointer, I might just try the free trial subscription for the curiosity factor.

Shaolin_Monkey

Yes it's certainly sensible to look at the costs in a rational way like that

As for other sites, of the ones I've tried, the FT has a decent portfolio section (requires free registration). It records transactions rather than just showing current holdings, can record dividends and re-investments etc. It supports managed funds, shares, ETF's - it's definitely worth a look. http://markets.ft.com/portfolio/all.asp

gmgmgm

bowlhead99 wrote: »

But thanks for the pointer, I might just try the free trial subscription for the curiosity factor.

bowlhead99, I'd be interested to know how you get on with Sharescope. Like you, I use Excel to track my portfolio (and I think we both have sophisticated spreadsheets set up). e.g. IRR (why can't MS fix those bugs in XIRR!), TR vs. simple change, time-series data etc.. I also have some US stocks so need to manage 2 currencies. I use smf_addin to automate all of the price fetching.

I don't really want to maintain this xls for the next ten years though!

paulop

Hi All,
I was very relieved to find this thread and discover that it isn't just me that can't find a good portfolio tracking tool anywhere (either online or to download). I have used GnuCash for years to manage all my finances and investments, but it's not good at reporting and helping me see how well investments have performed. E.g. no real charting tools.

I have been searching the web for a while now to find some alternatives but to no avail. A key requirement for me is the ability to import a history of transactions as I don't want to have to retype all of my transactions.

Here's what I found:
- morningstar.co.uk is about the best I found. You can see charts but the user interface is still terrible. If it had an import tool I might just use it as it is at least free.
- portfolio.ft.com - terrible. Was able to add transactions manually but no charting. No import tool. Terrible UI.
- thisismoney.co.uk - Terrible. Terrible. Owned by the Daily Mail. Enough said.
- Google finance - has the best UI, but doesn't recognise the UK funds I hold
- Sharescope - too expensive to justify for the investment gains I make. I would want to be making at least £5000 ROI per year to justify this spend

I also looked at Mint.com (US only) but it's more of a current a/c and budgeting tool any way. Money Dashboard is a UK equivalent of Mint, but doesn't look promising either.

I can see that I'm going to have to resort to brushing up my Excel skills. No wonder the finance industry has such a bad rep and makes so much money. How can the average punter take control of their finances with such little, or so over-priced help and tools.

Sophie-1

I use Hargeaves and Lansdowne and I've been quite happy with them.