Sharesight Blog

Excel exports now available

Posted by Scott Ryburn on January 27, 2010

Excel exports are now available on all of the pages under the reports menu – look for the new Excel icon (and also the new print icon) in the top right corner of the reports.

The Excel sheets contain formulas to calculate totals where appropriate so this will make it really easy to add new rows into the spreadsheets if you need to.

The Excel export files are compatible with the following versions of Microsoft Excel:

• Excel XP, 2003 and 2007 for Windows
• Excel 2004 or 2008 for Mac OS X

Thanks to our beta group customers for the testing and feedback.

Remember me function improved

Posted by Scott Ryburn on October 29, 2009

A big thank you to everyone who completed our recent customer survey. The survey results will help us to improve Sharesight for everybody and we really appreciate all of the great comments and suggestions.

We have started on our list of improvements by fixing problems that many of you reported with the ‘remember me’ function. ‘Remember me’ will now work across multiple computers and we have increased the time that ‘remember me’ stays active so that it will still work even if you haven’t accessed Sharesight for a while.

Here are some tips on how to use the ‘remember me’ function:

1. If you don’t want to have to type your email and password each time you access Sharesight, click the ’remember me’ tick-box on the login page. Please note that this will allow anyone who has access to your computer to view your portfolio without a password, so if other people have access to your computer you might not want to use the ‘remember me’ function.

2. When you have finished using Sharesight simply close your browser. Do not click the logout link – see below.

3. If you don’t want to use the ‘remember me’ function anymore, access your Sharesight account and click the ‘logout’ link in the top right corner of the screen. This will clear your ‘remember me’ status on all computers that you have used to access Sharesight.

Sharesight and Xero

Posted by Scott Ryburn on August 11, 2009

We are pleased to announce that Sharesight has become a certified Xero network partner. Xero is a market leading online accounting system. Sharesight has partnered with Xero in order to provide a seamless solution between portfolio management and portfolio accounting. Learn more about Xero at www.xero.com, free trial accounts are available.

The Xero Synchronisation feature allows you to connect your portfolio to your Xero account. This allows you to send details of share purchases, sales, and dividends to Xero as draft invoices, which can then approved for inclusion in your financial accounts and used to reconcile against your bank account.

If you have a Xero account, Xero synchronisation can be set up by clicking settings, then ‘Xero Synchronisation’ for the portfolio that you wish to connect. Note that you must first generate a Sharesight Network key from within Xero. Full instructions can be found in the Sharesight help documentation here.

Below is a short video we prepared for Xero customers:

NZ Shareholders Association AGM

Posted by Scott Ryburn on July 20, 2009

Sharesight is proud to be sponsoring the NZ Shareholders Association AGM this Friday 24 July at the James Cook Hotel in Wellington.

The event will feature the following guest speakers:

Morning Session:

• The Hon Bill English on Creating an Ownership Society. Bill is the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and Minister of Infrastructure.
• Tim Brown on Preserving Shareholder Value in Difficult Times. Tim specialises in financial structuring at Infratil. He is also a director of Wellington Airport and NZ Bus.

Afternoon Session:

• Oliver Saint on Using Z Scores to Rate Companies. Oliver is a Chartered Accountant and a former merchant and investment banker. He now works from home as an equities fund manager.
• Rodney Dickens on Recessions and Investing in the Share Market. Rodney is Managing Director and Chief Research Officer of Strategic Risk Analysis Limited and has worked in the share broking industry for 12 years as an economist, strategist and head of research.

For members of the public the cost is $20 each for the morning and afternoon sessions or $50 for the full day including lunch. For Further information please visit The NZSA Website

If you are a Sharesight subscriber we have some limited free spaces available at the morning and afternoon sessions, please email contact@sharesight.co.nz before 4pm Wednesday 22 July if you are interested.

Calculating Share Returns

Posted by Tony Ryburn on August 6, 2008

One of our most important objectives in setting up Sharesight was to give you the true return on your shares. One of the many shortcomings of the so called ‘free’ sites is that they fail miserably in this vital area.

One of the reasons they fail is that providing you with the true, annualised return on your shares is trickier than it sounds. For a start you need to have a large amount of data at your fingertips and you need to be able to account for corporate actions like dividends, share splits, amalgamations and bonus issues because these will make nonsense of return calculations if you don’t.

To further complicate matters, there are two common arithmetically correct ways to calculate returns and in some circumstances they can give radically different answers. The two methods are the compounding method and the simple or non-compounding method.

The easiest way to appreciate the difference between the two methods is to consider a deposit account at the bank. If the bank quotes you a 7% interest rate this is a compounding rate. This means that if you do not withdraw your interest it will remain in your account and you will receive interest on that interest. Under the simple or non-compounding method, interest is calculated only on the original amount invested.

It is clear from the table below that $1000 invested for 10 years at 10% using the simple method does not equal 10% using the compound method. The simple method results in the return of your initial investment of $1000 plus a further $1000 of interest at the end of 10 years, whereas the compounding method results in the return your original investment of $1000 plus $1593.74 of interest. In fact an investment of $1000 that results in a return of that investment plus a further $1000 of interest over 10 years, equates to a compound return of approximately 7%.

To compare apples with apples a compound return calculation must be applied to your share portfolio if you want to compare its returns with a bank deposit. In the example above the correct return to compare to a bank deposit is 7% compound not 10% simple.

So what does Sharesight do?
Until now Sharesight has used a simple return calculation. This method is widely used to calculate share returns. Although it is arithmetically correct, it produces figures that overstate share returns in comparison to a compound return on a bank deposit.

This is why we have introduced a compound return calculation that you can select and apply to all tables in Sharesight that display return information. We use a daily compounding formula as this is standard practice among banks. Although simple interest will remain as the default setting you can choose to switch to compounding returns on a per portfolio basis by editing the portfolio settings (found under the settings link at the top right of the screen). There is also a link to change the percentage return method at the bottom of each page for which compounding return figures are available.

So which is correct and what should you do?
Both methods are arithmetically correct. We at Sharesight do not wish to get embroiled in a debate concerning the merits of one method over the other. You are free to choose which ever method you prefer.

Some more technical information about the formulas that Sharesight uses to calculate returns can be found here.

We also answer some common questions about compounding interest (and a variety of other questions) in the frequently asked questions section of the help documentation, which can be found here.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

FIF report now available!

Posted by Scott Ryburn on June 16, 2008

Today we are pleased to announce the release of our Foreign Investment Fund (FIF) report. If you invest in Australian shares, the report shows whether or not you are caught by the new FIF taxation rules. If you are, it will calculate your taxable FIF income.

The first part of the report shows which of your shares are caught by the new rules after allowing for various exemptions. For most investors, there is also a further threshold exemption if the cost price of your overseas investments is less than $50,000. The report provides the cost price of all of your shares that are subject to FIF tax, so you can see whether you exceed the threshold amount.

If you are caught by the new rules, the report will calculate your FIF tax liability under both the Fair Dividend Rate (FDR) method and the Comparative Value (CV) method so that you can select the one that minimises your tax bill.

The report provides a simple summary page as well as detailed report pages, and worksheets detailing all aspects of the calculations. As with the other Sharesight reports, the FIF report has a number of sophisticated ‘behind the scenes’ features such as automatically adjusting for share splits, consolidations and bonus issues.

The FIF report can be run on an existing portfolio at the click of a button. New users can easily set up a portfolio in a few minutes because dividends, splits and consolidations, share prices and exchange rates are all provided automatically.

The first part of the report, showing whether you are caught by the new rules, is now available to all Sharesight subscribers (including free trial users). The remainder of the report is available to subscribers on the Expert plan.

If you would like to see the FIF report in more detail, please take a look at the short 5 minute demo video below.

Foreign Investment Fund Taxpayers

Posted by Tony Ryburn on June 6, 2008

A good tax system is a simple one - right? Well all I can say is that someone forgot to tell the Government which has created a nightmare of complexity for FIF taxpayers. The Government was no doubt aided and abetted by its advisors who should surely have known better.

For those FIF taxpayers who are not Sharesight customers (see below) the new regime is going to result in a huge amount of unproductive time and cost. When this is added to the cost of setting up and administering the new FIF regime, the costs are surely going to be outweighed by the tax revenue benefit many times over.

The range of information required by FIF investors to complete their tax return is mind-boggling. Amongst other things they need to:

• Identify their FIF investments
• Determine whether a threshold exemption applies by establishing what was paid for FIFs on day one (including brokerage) using a FIFO calculation to account for subsequent buys and sells
• Identify any individual investments that may be exempt based on a complex and difficult-to-determine set of criteria
• Establish market value of portfolio value at the beginning of the year
• Determine the appropriate tax calculation method(s)
• Identify acquisitions and disposals during the year
• Make any required adjustments for quick sales, using at least one of two possible methods
• Adjust for and capital reorganisations that may have occurred
• Identify all gross dividends received
• Identify the dates of all transactions
• Identify appropriate exchange rates and do the conversions
• Obtain the market value at the end of the year if the CV method is the most appropriate

So what’s the answer? We can but hope that if there is a change of Government, this piece of lunatic legislation will be repealed. But don’t hold your breath!

In the meantime there is great news for FIF investors with non-exempt Australian shares. At the end of next week we will be providing an FIF report to customers on the Expert plan which will provide the data they need to meet their tax obligations automatically. This will save a huge amount of time and angst not to mention accounting fees -assuming they can find an accountant prepared to do the work at any price.

Below is a sneak peak at what the new report will look like, we will be publishing a more detailed tour shortly.

       

Click the images to enlarge them

Sold Shares Report

Posted by Scott Ryburn on April 28, 2008

In the latest Sharesight update we have put some finishing touches on the Sold Shares report which includes links back to the Share Details page for each share on the report. This is really handy if you need to edit historic dividend or trade details for a share that you have sold out of.

The sold shares report shows capital, dividend, and currency gains associated with shares that have been sold and are therefore not reported under your current holdings. As with the main portfolio page, the return figures in the report may be displayed in dollars or as annualised percentages.

Other recent changes include the addition of a quantity column on the main portfolio page to show the total quantity of shares owned for each holding (by popular demand!). Thanks to everyone who has provided feedback, and please keep it coming!

Watch your investment grow

Posted by Scott Ryburn on January 7, 2008

We’ve added a new graph option to the portfolio overview page that lets you visualise the value of your portfolio over time. You can switch between this and the portfolio gains graph by clicking the ‘change’ link to the top right of the graph. As with the other selection criteria, Sharesight will remember your graph choice next time you login, so you will always see your preferred graph right away.

Thanks to all of you who have been providing us with feedback. We have some more great features on the way soon, please keep the feedback coming!

Sharesight sets sail

Posted by Marcus Baguley on December 21, 2007

The Sharesight team took a breather by heading out onto the Wellington harbour with the support of the Wellington Sailing Academy.

It was the roughest day of the month but that didn’t prevent the spinnaker going up on the return trip in 30 knots of wind. A great day out. YeeHaa