Personal & SME Accounting Software & General Finance Tips

True, but I’m not really sure what else to compare it to. While it isn’t risk free, it is extremely low risk to the point where I actually got my mother involved in this and even recommended it to my sister and my business partner.

For interest sake, here are the stats from Shiftly for all the trades for 2021. Most of the loss making trades were due to bank delays. i.e. Book a trade today, USD bought but due to some delay, the funds only arrive in the US tomorrow instead of today, which leads to an additional day of fx exposure.

Total trades: 25,725
Profitable trades: 25,175
Loss-making trades: 550
Free trades: 1,328

Average net return: 1.53%
Average net profit: 1.58%
Average net loss: -0.59%
Highest net return: 7.66%

Average trade size: R231,248
Largest trade size: R1,862,003

I completely understand, it is tricky. Just so long as you’re aware of the fact that it’s… not apples and oranges, but maybe comparing red and green apples :smiley:

Came across Akaunting, haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere here and in open-source from what I can see.

Akaunting is a completely free web tool that lets you invoice, track expenses, and handle all your freelance or small business accounting needs right in the browser. It works well on PC, Android, and iOS devices.

What’s unique about Akaunting is that it’s open-source, and you can download the software and host it on your own web server. You’d still access it using a web browser, but all the data remains with you. For privacy-minded folks who want remote invoice access, Akaunting is a smart choice.

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Anyone interested in some stats on this, I just got instruction to sell 3 shares from them. I can’t remember when exactly I bought these, but it would have been somewhere in 2020. Here are my results:

  • Afrocentric sold at 30% profit
  • Frontier Transport Holdings sold at 30% profit, but there were some dividends as well on top of this 30%
  • Argent Industrial, sold half at 140% profit, holding the other half for further gains.

The first two didn’t make target and were sold due to factors that changed. The third exceeded the original target price.

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Does anybody know of any decent Share Portfolio Tracking software that can retrieve prices from the JSE?

The summary provided by EasyEquities is nice, but it doesn’t give daily movements, I can’t sort the list and I have to expand each individual one to see the number of shares and average purchase price.

Then there is a monthly subscription option to MoneyWeb which allows me to capture both the Purchase Price and Nr of Shares, but it works somewhat stupid (for capturing) and it only has a column for daily movement, not overall movement. Actually if they could just add columns for overall movement % and total profit/loss, that would work perfect.

Other portfolios and watchlists like Sharenet and Investing.com don’t allow for capturing the number of shares or purchase price (or they don’t show the columns I want).

Other than that, I only know of Sharetrackin.com, but I refuse to do business with them.

Last resort would be to develop my own, but I barely have enough time as it is.

I’ve use that for tracking before. Not sure if its exactly what you’re after though.

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So much Comic Sans to clean out :open_mouth:

I use an Android app called My Stocks Portfolio (real creative name!) that I wish had a web app or desktop alternative. They track annualized growth per stock investment which is a suggestion that I made, so they are responsive. You can track several portfolios, and import/export data. Works for both US and JSE stocks and a bunch of Cryptos.

I also have a Google sheet that I used in the beginning. It needs some cleaning up before I can share, but I’ll be happy do so if there’s interest. Just let me know @Viper ?

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Thanks, I’ll have a look as soon as I have some time.

Essentially what I want is this:
I want to enter:

  • Share code and/or name
  • Average price per share or total purchase price
  • Number of shares

For each entry, I want to see:

  • Current price per share (must automatically retrieve the latest prices)
  • Current value of holdings
  • % movement from purchase
  • % movement from previous day
  • Value change from previous day

The list must be sortable by name, Total value of holdings, % movement from purchase and % movement from previous day.

I’ll have a look at the options recommended above and see if any meet my needs. At the very least, the Google sheet provided may provide me with a shortcut to retrieving the 15min delayed prices from the JSE should I opt to develop my own app.

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Ok, MoneyWeb just responded to my email and said they’ll include my requests in their development this year.

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Well that’s awesome. I’ll go have a look at their system, since they’re that responsive.

No clue when they’ll fix it, they just said this year (of which we still have 11 months left). But they’re quite cheap. Think it is like R60 per month.

What is nice is that you can expand a share on your watchlist to view the details. The only downside is specifying your volume and purchase price per share. You have to update one and click the update button which reloads the whole watchlist… then scroll and open the share again and update the other field. This is however one of the issues in my email to them that they said they’ll fix this year.

Unfortunately it also doesn’t seem that you can add ETFs and ETNs to this wishlist. Those are in the minority on my portfolio though, so not a big deal.

My android app allows custom entries, so I added my EC10 crypto bundle, and then manually update the price every day or so. Other than that, I haven’t found any missing tickers. Worth a look, imo, if you use an android device

There’s an iOS version of thier app too:

Listed as “Free, Offers In-App Purchases” so not sure how flexible and useful it’ll be without paying for premium version.

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Android had a premium version as well, that I don’t use. I think it’s mostly a sync or backup service that you pay for, but I can’t be 100% sure right now.

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Actually, it looks like Investing.com does have a nice solution. The default is only a watchlist but if you click Add next to it, you can choose between Watchlist and Holdings. Holdings give nice detailed options including things like 1 week movement, 1 month movement, etc.
And it is free.

Thread necro ahead (actually, how old should a thread be idle before it is considered dead?)

Anyway, came across this as I received an invoice from a professional service that was using this service, thought I would share it here. Who doesn’t love free stuff eh.

https://www.waveapps.com/accounting

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Nice find and share. Bookmarking that. Needs a little more investigation to see what level of localisation there is.

Was yours a simple invoice with the services bank account details to make manual payments, or did it have some form of “Click Here to Pay Now” automation link?

No, I don’t see any live payment option. I can view the invoice or receipt online via a link, or I can view my statement balance at any point.

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So has anybody here been investing in a Tax Free Savings Account, Tax Free Trading Account or Retirement Annuity? What are your thoughts on it and how has your performance / growth been? If positive, who are you using for those accounts?

I’ve opened both via Easy Equities and I’m rather unimpressed. The investment options are extremely limited and the ETFs/bundles/indexes that you can invest in, performs rather poorly. Other the past year, both my overall state of my RA and TFSA are in loss (small, but still). If I just put it in a plain interest bearing TFSA, I would have been in profit at least. Granted, due to the chaos in the beginning of the year, the markets were performing poorly, but despite that, at least I’ve regularly banked profits from my normal trading (which is what I use to fund the TFSA). However, those aren’t tax free.
I’ve also tried a small TFSA at 10X Investments and one of FNB’s Horizon series… both that would have been beaten by a normal interest bearing savings account.

I’m considering scrapping these accounts entirely and do something else, but the tax free options are rather limited (at least to my knowledge). I’m open to ideas.

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I had an Old Mutual retirement annuity which I stopped paying a couple of years ago. In recent times I see it’s been performing terribly. I would’ve had more money by now by putting it in a normal savings account…

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