News

Modifications for 1.1.2

• Added portfolio specific settings to toolbar and file menu
• Added portfolio specific option to override country when importing dates and displaying foreign currency
• Moved default commission preference to portfolio specific settings
• Added warning popups for cases of missing or invalid fields when importing from CSV or QIF
• Added dialog to prompt for split ratio when importing stock splits from CSV files without split ratios
• Now properly handles case where stock split and sell transaction are input out of chronological order
• Totals row values now properly refreshing to zero after filter query results in no investments

This maintenance release includes a few bug fixes.

Modifications for 1.1.1

• More robust checking for empty data fields during CSV import
• No longer crashing after removing or undoing the single remaining cash transaction
• Initial location of horizontal scroller of investment table is back on the left as expected
• Revert menu item is now grayed out for new, unsaved documents

After almost six months since the last release, we finally have a new version, and just under the wire for April 15th! And I think it’s major enough to justify bumping up the minor version number. Probably the first thing you’ll notice is the GUI looks a little less clunky. And there are numerous usability improvements, some of which should probably have been in 1.0, like main menu alternatives for the toolbar and investment view buttons, import progress bar, descriptive undo/redo, more investment filtering options, etc. Most of the major new features involve importing, such as duplicate transaction detection and support for several more broker transaction file formats. But there are also some significant stability and efficiency improvements under the hood as well, mostly involving CoreData, import, and undo/redo. Oh, and there are preference settings for just about everything now, including the filter settings and turning off automatic cash transfers.

Feature List

• Moderate GUI makeover
• Duplicate transaction detection
• Import progress indicator
• Import now runs concurrently
• Schwab CSV import support
• E*TRADE CSV import support
• Scottrade QIF import fixed
• ShareBuilder QIF import support
• Can abort import after individual transaction canceled
• Import now handles files containing OS-9 style line endings
• No longer unstable after undo
• Descriptive undo and redo menu items
• Can now undo entire import
• Can turn off automatic cash transfers in preferences
• Negative cash balance detection during cash transfers
• Enhanced date range filter with quarter, month, week, and day related presets
• Investment type filter now has non-cash option
• Investment filter settings now saved to preferences
• “Hide Filters” and “Hide Toolbar” added to View menu and saved to preferences
• Added View menu items as alternate commands for view switching and investment filters
• Added Transactions menu and alternate menu items for adding transactions
• Moved “Import…” from File menu to Transactions menu
• Replaced all occurrences of word “savings” with “interest-bearing”
• Fixed some minor Tiger bugs
• Various code improvements

User’s Guide and CSV File Tweaking

Be sure and check out the updated user’s guide. It it now available in PDF format directly from the application help menu. In fact the old help viewer style help has been replaced with the PDF, since it’s really the same content, but it looks much better as a PDF I think (the equations were really screwed up in the old help viewer version and it was a major hassle to convert it from LaTeX to HTML). At some point later I might create a simpler, quick help version and bring the help viewer option back again. But anyway, the user’s guide now contains an appendix section describing how to tweak CSV files from brokers that FolioCalc doesn’t support and try to get them to import successfully.

A Peek Into the Future

Many of you have requested stock dividend, short sales, and wash sale support. These features and more are in the works. Some of them may even show up in the next minor release (1.2). Hopefully that will be much sooner than six months from now!

This release contains a few bug-fixes, mostly related to importing, and also some user’s guide updates. One fixed bug was major enough to be worth mentioning in detail here:

Fixed Failed Import Bug

In the previous version, if you tried to import a file that was not in a CSV or QIF format that FolioCalc recognized, but it was close enough that it passed an initial header check, it would go on with the import, only putting out a few errors to the console but without popping up an error message and you would end up with only partial or no resulting transactions. Worse yet, if new transactions were entered manually after the import silently failed, they would not appear in the list. This unusable state would persist until FolioCalc was restarted again. All this has been fixed in 1.0.2. And FolioCalc is also more strict now about what files are allowed to be imported in the first place.

Complete Change List for 1.0.2

• The user’s guide now contains detailed instructions on how to download transaction files from the websites of several online brokers
• Errors during import will no longer prevent further transactions from being entered
• Invalid file checking during import is much more robust now
• Now prevents the user from selecting bundles such as applications when importing
• Rebuilt with latest eSellerate engine, which fixes a rare activation issue one user was seeing

Added shortcut to RhodoSoft support page

There is now a new menu item under the help menu to launch the RhodoSoft support page in your web browser. It’s a nice shortcut when the URL is not handy.

Fixed revert bug

Some of you may have noticed that if you used the Revert to Factory Defaults button on the preferences panel, you would find that FolioCalc would come up in trial mode at the next relaunch, requiring the activation code to be entered again. Revert was clearing the activation code along with the rest of the values reset in preferences. That won’t happen now because the revert button has been removed in this release. Since there aren’t very many preference settings, I don’t think most people will miss it much. If for any reason you really do want to reset out preferences to factory settings, you can do that outside of FolioCalc by deleting the preferences file called com.rhodosoft.foliocalc.plist which resides in Library/Preferences off your home folder. Just be aware that doing that would require you to re-enter your activation code at the next FolioCalc launch and also would remove any custom window size and column sizes and ordering.

Added error code for rare activation failures

This is one most people hopefully will never notice. If there are any errors during activation that don’t fall into the common categories such as serial number typos or no internet connection, the error code from the eSellerate API will now be displayed with the message so that RhodoSoft support has more information to help pinpoint the problem.