Re: SellXfr changes to negative BuyXfr

Edward - I did some digging and it doesn't appear like Moneydance has ever
computed the number of shares on a buy or sell -- it automatically computes
the price and the total value only. So to compute the number of shares you
need to enter the formula ({amount}/{price})  as you suggest.

>Is there any reason for this behavior? Or is it just a fall-through case?
As best as I can tell, a 0-share transaction may still be useful for some
purposes, perhaps to document a special fee transaction or something. Maybe
0-share transactions were allowed prior to the MiscExp and MiscInc
transaction types were introduced.

I suppose MD doesn't want to presume anything about a field as important as
the number of shares, which needs to be exact and match the investment
statement. With the built-in formula capability, there really isn't a good
reason to automatically infer a formula, and if all 3 fields try to be too
intelligent about auto calculation, it can get frustrating if they get it
wrong.

Hope this helps,

--Kevin


On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Edward Reid <[email protected]> wrote:

> I just entered a SellXfr transaction -- something I haven't done much,
> perhaps never. I had just placed the sell order, so I didn't have all the
> details, but wanted it represented in MD for planning. I was selling from a
> bond fund, so I knew what the exact dollar amount would be, but not the
> number of shares.
>
> So I entered a future date, SellXfr, entered the receiving account, left
> the shares blank, and entered the dollar amount. The price per share was
> already present (may change a cent or two, but I can deal with fixing that
> later). And hit Enter.
>
> I was expecting MD to calculate the number of shares based on the dollar
> amount and the share price. After all, MD is usually fairly aggressive at
> adjusting one of the three figures when I alter another -- enough so that I
> had to get used to entering them in the right order so that both dollar
> amount (for the external or cash account) and share count (for the
> investment account) would come out right.
>
> MD left the share count blank, changed the txn type to BuyXfr, and negated
> the dollar amount. This resulted in a very odd-looking txn: BuyXfr, no
> shares, negative dollars.
>
> Is there any reason for this behavior? Or is it just a fall-through case?
> If it's inadvisable for MD to calculate the share count in this case, I'm
> happy getting an error message and being told I have to do it. (That's what
> I ended up doing -- just entered the formula in the shares box.) I can't
> recall whether MD ever rejects a txn entry -- it would make sense that MD
> would try to avoid discarding the information, even if it needed correcting.
> But twisting it like this doesn't make sense.
>
> Anyway, that's the long story, I haven't decided whether to bother with a
> formal report.
>
> Edward
>
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