Given that Emma can’t connect to my broker (Hargreaves Lansdown), I have to use a Manual account to track my investments.
In the absence of the automated feed, I’d like to track my daily performance so I use the “Change balance” functionality. However, this doesn’t seem to add a transaction with the delta between old balance and new balance in effect, tracking the performance). The current functionality changes the balance historically as well, which hides any daily movement.
An example from a competing app (MoneyWiz) - it automatically creates a “New Balance” transaction with the delta between the old balance and the adjusted one:
You’re right in the sense that this functionality can be replicated manually by doing the maths yourself.
If I manually calculate new balance minus old balance and add that as a new transaction, it will kind of work. However, this is terribly impractical as it slows the process down considerably (especially if you have multiple investment accounts to update).
The key here is for the delta to be calculated automatically and logged in as a transaction.
It’s automatic in MoneyWiz and I can’t think of the downside of leaving a transaction trail with every change. It’s of course important that this transaction (especially when associated with an Investment account) is understood by Emma to be portfolio movements rather than actual transactions. All other manual transactions can be seen as explicit instructions/transactions by the user?
I think it makes sense to ask the user if they want to create a delta transaction. I have often changed balances of other accounts simply because they were a bit off, and I don’t necessarily want to have a delta transaction for those as it would make the transaction feed a bit messy with “corrections”.
I do like the feature though. I currently don’t keep my investment balances on Emma, but having this ability would make me inclined to start.
I’d think that you would actually want a “Correction” transaction in your list (but excluded in Analytics) in that case to know you’ve corrected it and by how much? I can’t see any negative in having a trace that’s excluded
This would be a really helpful feature - I also have the same issue (and coincidentally the same broker!). I am also tracking offshore and foreign Bank accounts manually so anything to make easier welcomed!!!
+1. I currently do the maths myself and do it as a transaction, but if I could just update the balance and have Emma do it for me that would be even better
I think this could be solved most effectively by creating different categories of manual account with slightly different features.
So savings accounts would have an adjustment category for interest, investments would have a delta transaction category to account for profit and loss etc. Essentially, templates for manual accounts
+1, I used to do the maths manually but gave up as too much faff. Now 90% of my manual accounts only track balances and it’s a shame as the data is there (even shown in the graph).
Slightly offtopic, for manual transactions such as this, why is it not possible to change the date that was originally entered? If I mistype the date all I can do is delete and re-enter which is not ideal.
Is there a reason why you choose to edit the balance instead of creating a transaction?
You should be able to change the date of the manual transaction - if you click into the transaction and then at the top you’ll see a drop down arrow next to the date which you can amend.
Ah great - thanks for the tip about the date. Either it wasn’t available months ago when I gave up or it just wasn’t obvious enough, but yep that is perfect.
Re manual transactions, it’s just too much work. Adding a new transaction needs calculating the delta amount + a reference (even if I’d always use the same), a category (even if I’d always use the same) and a date, while changing the balance only needs the final amount.
Ok so it’s just a time saving thing? Have you tried using our Smart Rules feature? You can link regular transactions to offline accounts - so for example if money comes out of my Nationwide current account (supported in Emma) and goes into my Nationwide savings account (not supported) it’ll pick this up and create a transaction/ update the balance on my offline account!
