FolioCalc Features

Many of the stock investment quantities that are displayed in FolioCalc are dynamic. FolioCalc can receive stock share price data from a choice of two different web services on configurable time intervals. This near-realtime price data (usually delayed 15-20 minutes) is used to automatically re-calculate any investment quantities that are dependent on it. FolioCalc can fetch share price data automatically for stocks from most US and international stock exchanges. Stock share prices can also be entered in manually. Latest share price data is automatically stored between runs so you don't have to save the document each time. If the internet is down or realtime data is turned off in FolioCalc, it will use the last stored values.

This is one of the most powerful features of FolioCalc, especially when it comes to stock investments. Many other stock portfolio trackers require you to enter stock buy and sell transactions with the same lot size, essentially creating an investment record manually. So the entered stock transactions may not correspond to the lot sizes of the actual transactions made with a broker. For example, you may have bought 50 shares of Intel stock one day and then another 50 shares another day, then say you later sold 25 shares and then sold another 75 shares at a later date. When you enter real-world transactions like these into FolioCalc, it automatically figures out how many separate investment records to make, and when to close certain ones based on First In First Out (FIFO), the primary tax lot accounting strategy expected by the IRS. It also figures out how to properly split the commission and fees between the various investments. So in this case it would create three closed investments for Intel stock, two for 25 shares, and one for 50 shares. Each of these three investments would have separate capital gains and returns. Some of them might be short-term and some long-term with different tax implications. For active traders, the real-world scenarios are often much more complex than this example. Figuring out all this manually with a calculator at tax time can be a major pain and most inexpensive investment software (or web-based tools) won't help you with this problem (without paying considerably more and dealing with the complexities and bloat of a general accounting program).

The basic quantities you see on most portfolio trackers are there such as cost basis, capital gain, percent return and more. But that's just the beginning. You can view annualized return (aka. CAGR), which can be handy for comparing long term investments on an equal footing. Want to see approximately what you would be making on a investment after the government takes it's cut? You can view post-tax versions of several of the applicable financial quantities. Sold a stock investment in the past and want to know what it would be worth right now if you hadn't sold it? There is a quantity called unrealized value that shows you just that. And the columns can be rearranged or removed completely via preferences to suit your tastes.

FolioCalc was written since day one with general investments in mind. Interest-bearing accounts (like a money market account) and cash accounts are also supported in addition to stock investments. Interest-bearing account returns are automatically calculated from the interest payment transactions. You can view your interest-bearing investments and cash along with your stock investments or separately via a query, it's up to you.

Once you have all your transactions entered correctly, FolioCalc does most of the hard work by generating all of the investment records and calculating each capital gain and cost basis needed on the Schedule-D income tax form as well as the totals. Usually all you have to do is simply copy down the required amounts onto the form. Note however that special cases such as stock dividends, wash sales, and short selling are not currently handled by FolioCalc and may require special treatment prior to filling out the tax forms.

You can filter your investments by any combination of queries for date range (YTD, last year, month, week, day, custom range), state (open or closed), investment type (stock, cash, non-cash, interest-bearing), and term (short or long). Each query is accessed via a pulldown so you don't have to type anything except for the case of the custom date range. Each query is logically ANDed with the others so many different combinations of queries can be requested. For example, when doing your taxes for last year and you need to list your stock investments for the Schedule-D form you would query with a date range of last year, a state of closed, type set to stock, and the appropriate term you need for the form. Then you would see just the filtered subset of investments you need to fill out the form.

A totals row at the bottom of the investment table includes totals and other composite values derived from the individual investments. When you filter the investment records based on various criteria to display a subset of your investments, the totals row updates to reflect only the records in the filter. And the totals row does not scroll vertically like the other rows so it always remains in view at the bottom of the table.

Stock transactions can be entered directly on the transactions pane or imported from either QIF or CSV files downloaded from online brokers.

An accompanying cash or interest-bearing transfer transaction will automatically be recorded when entering stock transactions. An accompanying cash transfer transaction will automatically be recorded when entering interest-bearing transactions. This is a handy feature that saves you from having to separately enter in transfer transactions manually. This simple form of double-entry accounting also helps insure that the total current value has a realistic value when the cash account is included in the list of filtered investments.

As is the case with other stock transactions, you can either manually enter stock splits or import them. FolioCalc automatically adjusts the shares owned in the appropriate investment records without effecting the original buy transaction records. All investment quantities that are dependent on number of shares are automatically adjusted. Any number of forward or reverse split transactions can be entered and the number of shares for the effected investments will update to reflect the cumulative combination of splits.

You can separately view all your transactions, investments, or the full list of stocks associated with your stock investments. The stock view shows you at a glance the total shares you still own for each stock along with the last received share price and timestamp.

When you print, the document is printed with the same sorting, active columns, column ordering, and filtering as the currently displayed table.