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Investment Portfolio

The Investment Portfolio is where you can track your investments by creating portfolios and entering stock symbols. The Investment Portfolio will show you your overall and daily gain/loss as well as number of shares owned, last price and change.

You can find the Investment Portfolio tool by clicking on Tools at the top of the page, then click on the Investment Portfolio link.
This tool is only available for ClearCheckbook Premium members.

Creating a Portfolio

Having different portfolios helps you keep your investments separated from each other. For example, if you have a Roth IRA, a 401(k) and a standard investment account, you could create a portfolio for each of those and track their performance individually.

You can create a portfolio by clicking on the + Portfolio link at the top right side of the investment list.

Investment Portfolio - Add New Portfolio link
Add new portfolio link

Once clicked, a form will appear where you can enter the name of the new portfolio. Once you add the new portfolio, the page will refresh and you can start adding investments to it.

Investment Portfolio - Add New Portfolio form
Add new portfolio form

Adding an Investment

Click on the blue + Add Investment button to open the Add a Transaction form.

Investment Portfolio - Add New Investment button
Add new investment button

The form that loads has all of the necessary information to add a new investment transaction. The various form fields are shown in the screenshot and explained in the table below.

Investment Portfolio - Add New Investment form
Sample of the Add a Transaction form
Field Description
Symbol This is the investment symbol / ticker, for example AAPL
Type This is the transaction type. The options are Buy and Sell
Date Traded The date you made the transaction.
# Shares How many shares you purchased or sold.
Share Price The price you purchased or sold the investment.
Commission Optional. If your investment broker charges a commission on trades you can enter that amount here. This is used for cacluating the Cost Basis of the investment.
Note Optional. You can enter an optional note here about the trade.
Portfolio If you have added a portfolio and want to add the trade to that portfolio, select it from the list.
Click the Save button after you've added the trade details and the page will be reloaded with the details of the trade.

Managing Portfolio Cash

In many cases, you don't have every penny in your portfolio invested or you're simply building up some cash to make a larger trade. You can use the Manage Cash section to track the cash on hand in each portfolio. We'll include this cash amount when showing you your overall portfolio value.

To manage your cash, click on the Manage Cash link as shown in the screenshot below.

Investment Portfolio - Manage Cash link
Click to manage your cash

The form that appears will list all of your portfolios and give you the option to enter how much cash each one has. You can also enter a General Cash amount if you have any cash that you plan on using for investing but isn't tracked anywhere else in ClearCheckbook.

Investment Portfolio - Manage Cash form
Manage cash form

Investment List

The investments list will be populated with all of your investments after you've made some purchases. The tabs at the top of the list will show your various portfolios, assuming you have created any. Clicking on a portfolio name will show just the investments for that portfolio.

Investment Portfolio - Investments List
Sample Investments list

The actual portfolio list consists of several different columns which are explained in the table below.

Column Description
Symbol This is the investment symbol. Clicking on the link will redirect you to a Yahoo Finance page with more information about the investment.
Last Price This is the last price the investment traded at. Note: prices are delayed at least 15 minutes.
Change How much the investment has changed over the course of the current trading session.
Shares How many shares you own of this investment.
Cost basis How much the investment has cost you. This follows the formula of (number of shares * share price)+commission
Mkt value The market value, or how much your investment is worth. This is number of shares * last price
Day's gain Your gain/loss over the course of the current trading session.
Overall gain Your overall gain/loss for the investment.
Overall gain % Your overall gain/loss in percentage form.
Actions

You can edit or delete the investment here. The edit icon lets you change which portfolio the investment is assigned to.

To edit the details of a trade, find the transaction in the Transaction List

If you added any cash to your portfolio, the cash value will appear at the bottom of the Mkt Value column.

The final row in the investment list is a Total row that sums the Cost basis, Mkt Value, Day's gain, Overall gain and Overall gain % columns for the given portfolio.

Editing / Deleting a Portfolio

You can edit the name of a portfolio or delete the portfolio completely by selecting the portfolio from the tabs at the top of the investment list. There are options to Edit Portfolio and Delete Portfolio.

Investment Portfolio - Manage Portfolio link
Manage Portfolio options

If you click on the Edit Portfolio link, a new form will appear where you can change the portfolio name.

Investment Portfolio - Manage Portfolio form
Manage Portfolio form

Transaction List

The Transactions List shows all of your individual buys and sells sorted by date, newest to oldest. You can click the icon to export the current list to a CSV file.

Investment Portfolio - Transactions List
Sample of transactions list

The transaction list shows the following information:

Column Description
Symbol This is the investment symbol. Clicking on the link will redirect you to a Yahoo Finance page with more information about the investment.
Type This is either a Buy or Sell
Date The date the trade was made.
Shares How many shares were involved in this trade.
Price The share price for the investment at the time the trade was made.
Commission If you paid a commission for this trade, the amount will appear here.
Portfolio The portfolio name if you added this investment to a portfolio.
Note The note field from the Add Investment form.
Actions You can edit or delete the trade here. The edit icon lets you change any details about the trade.
If you need to search for a trade that you made, you can enter the investment symbol in the search box at the top right side of the Transactions list. When you click Search, the list will display only the transactions for that symbol.

Cached Investment Values

If the investment symbol has a icon next to it, the price and change information are updated nightly for this investment instead of in real-time. This usually happens for mutual funds, ETFs or other investments that don't trade like normal stocks.

Manually Setting the Last Market Price

If the investment isn't updating for you, you have the option of manually setting the Last Market Price. To set the Last Market Price, find the investment in the Investment list and click the icon to edit the investment. The Edit form allows you to enter the Last Market Price.