This release includes some enhancements to QIF import and text input error checking and some bug fixes. Here is the change log for 0.9.10 (copied from the Readme file):

• Enhanced QIF import for savings accounts to automatically create a new savings investment if no one currently exists with that name.
• The “Done” button on new transaction and preferences panels will now be grayed out if any fields are not filled in.
• Fixed a bug where the trailer row was not being refreshed when a table column was moved.
• Fixed a bug where URL redirect requests for stock data were not being handled correctly.

Until this release, apparently FolioCalc was not working with “real” QIF files exported from Quicken. The QIF import logic was previously coded and tested with files that conformed to the published QIF standard. Well it turns out that the format of actual Quicken QIF files are quite different than what is published on even their own website! So now FolioCalc can successfully import the broker and bank transaction data from them and it has been tested with actual files exported from Quicken.

CSV files downloaded from Scottrade can now be imported. RhodoSoft now has broker accounts set up with Scottrade and E-Trade to be used for testing along with the Ameritrade and Fidelity accounts it has had for a while now. It turns out that E-Trade does not support either CSV or QIF but only QFX. FolioCalc will probably have support for QFX at some point but probably not until after the 1.0 version. So until then, E-Trade users can either use Quicken and export as QIF into FolioCalc or enter their transactions into FolioCalc manually.

Also QIF and CSV files in various non-ASCII text encodings can now be imported successfully.

Starting with this release, the symbols and formats for the display of currencies and percentages now reflect what the user has selected under the international settings panel in system preferences. A side effect of this is that negative currency amounts now show up with parenthesis instead of a negative sign (for the US at least). This more closely follows the convention for financial tables in the US. Note that no actual currency conversions are done, just the symbols are switched. Dates and times also follow the international settings by the way, but this behavior has been in effect for several releases now.

A few changes were also made to improve the compactness of the column data. For example, currency values over a trillion and percentages over a million now display in scientific notation. This allows huge values to be more easily viewed and without requiring the column to be resized really wide to see them. Although most people could only dream of seeing currency values this huge (but perhaps in the case of some small valued currencies), percentages can get pretty big in the case of annualized return when the investment has not been held very long. Another improvement to the compactness of percentages is now the decimal point and digits after are not shown for whole numbers.

The stock ticker column in the stock view can now be edited. This may come in handy when a stock ticker changes for a particular company. Changing it once in the stock view will automatically update all the transactions and investment records that refer to that stock record to reflect the new ticker. You may still want to manually update the arbitrary label field for any investments that refer to the old stock ticker after a ticker change (unless you change your labels to refer to the company name or something else), or you could just ignore the investment label altogether since it’s just arbitrary text. Note that the stock ticker may be changed to a ticker that is already in use in the document (already shows up in another row in the stock table). In this case, the existing stock record will be deleted after moving all the investments referring to it to the newly edited stock record. This is to insure there is only one stock record per ticker.

We are getting close to a release candidate for FolioCalc. There are a few import file formats that still need to be tested, but thats about it. New feature ideas will probably not go into the 1.0 but may show up in 1.X releases as free upgrades if they are not too major. Then at a later date there may be a 2.0 which would include major new features and require a paid upgrade.

There were only a few modifications this time and they all have to do with importing. Now multiple files can be selected to import at one time. An import icon has also been added to the toolbar for added convenience. Also Fidelity transaction CSV files that contain leading blank lines can now be imported without errors.

Mostly minor fixes and polishing. Here is the change log for 0.9.6 (copied from the Readme file):

• Will now redo FIFO when deleting stock transactions or when entering them out of order.
• Added automatic data version migration (from the last data version only).
• When stock or savings transactions are deleted, associated transfers are also removed.
• Changed preferences toolbar icon.
• Added tiny icon that shows up in help.
• Online help now works again.
• Fixed weird mathend bug in HTML docs.
• Fixed bug when deleting buy and sell transactions at the same time.
• Fixed bug when undoing a deleted transaction.
• Adjusted default window position and column widths.

The big enhancement it QIF import. Transaction data from bank, cash, or investment QIF file types can now be imported. CSV import is still required for stock transactions downloaded from online brokers that only support CSV (which is most of them), unless you can convert your CSV data into QIF using another program.

Here is the change log for 0.9.5 (copied from the Readme file):

• Added QIF import. Supports Bank, Cash, and Invst QIF types.
• Stock transactions will now always cause either a cash or a savings transfer.
• Savings transactions will now always cause a cash transfer.
• Added preferences option to prevent negative cash balances during cash transfers.
• Improved behavior of date range and state filters.
• Fixed totals row current value and ROI calculations.
• Changed all share counts to floating point, since fractional shares are possible.
• Transaction times within same day now order up corresponding to entry order.
• Put total closed value back in totals row since it is needed on tax forms.
• Created a third state and term for the cash account.
• Fixed stock split import from Ameritrade CSV files.
• Other minor fixes.

Here is the change log for 0.9.4 (copied from the Readme file):

• Changed lot commission calculation to distribute by shares instead of by lot count.
• Fixed several other calculations.
• Added option to save in XML format.
• Added some input range checking.
• Removed some values from the totals row that don’t make sense as totals.
• Improved default data feed implementation.
• Fixed YTD and custom date range filters to show open investments.
• Fixed the default values for the custom date range sheet.
• Various documentation updates.

The disk image now contains a copy of a sample data file. Since it contains a cash account and several stock and savings investments, it’s a good starting point for beta testing.

A column was added for last price quote timestamp to the stock table. Now you can see how stale a price quote is (not including the standard 20 minute delay).

Also switched to a faster and more secure binary data file format instead of XML. What I mean by “more secure” is that now no one can read or edit your data files with a text editor. But it also means the data files can no longer be manually “tweaked” in order to migrate them to the latest version after a data model change. Beta testers will just have to re-enter or import the data whenever the data model version changes until automated data migration gets implemented (see next paragraph). By the way, switching to binary data files from XML was a trivial change in Xcode that didn’t even require actual code changes thanks to CoreData!

Also added data file versioning. FolioCalc will now check the data file version before opening it to check whether it is up to date. Later if the data model changes I will bump the data version and maybe put some code in FolioCalc to migrate to the new version if it’s not too difficult. If data migration proves to difficult then I may have to put it off until the next major release and beta testers would have to re-enter or import all their data in to create the latest files. If they just have to import than this is not that big of a deal. Hopefully I won’t have to change the data model for a while.

Also made closed date show a grayed out n/a for open investments. Also fixed the annual return calculation for savings and stock investments. And I fixed saving of last quoted price to preferences between runs. So now if your internet is down or you just turned off data updating within FolioCalc for a while, you will still get the last good stock price quote whenever you bring up FolioCalc again and until you get data flowing again (as long as you don’t delete your preference file).

So now the beta is about ready to be unleashed to the world via the Apple downloads page. So that means pretty soon I may get a bunch of new beta testers sending me bugs and feature requests and somebody may actually be reading these news updates!

The most noticeable improvement is probably the shiny new piggybank and toolbar icons custom designed by Iconfactory. Also added transfers using cash or savings accounts when adding stock transactions. Also “under the hood” the code for the data updating and the equation dependancy hierarchy is much more robust now and some related bugs were fixed in the process.