Dick Watson wrote:

- quote -

Thanks for the responses. I managed to get it working pretty well last
week.

(I still think there ought to at least be an option for the program to
assume the Automatic Purchase cost of a fund on April 6th was the
closing price of that fund on April 6th, but I won't hold my breath.)

Brian

I do pretty much what you are trying to do with upwards of 25 buys per
month. I have scheduled transactions that I only have to adjust for the
share price (with the dance to calculate quantity) when the investments
happen. It's not completely automatic, but relatively quick and painless.
Some thoughts:

You can schedule one transaction with multiple Buy Investment/CDs in splits,
though M02 and higher makes it harder than need be. Create a Bill, not an
Investment Purchase, in the amount of the total contribution. Split it into
however many Buy Investment/CD lines as necessary and with amounts as you've
specified for your investment allocations. You may have to type "Buy
Investment/CD" in the box if it isn't a pull down choice.

Yes, the way Money solves for one of amount, quantity, price, and commission
can be maddening. Here's the workaround. First, select/delete the
"approximate" quantity. Then **Tab** to price. Enter the quote value. Hit
**Shift+Tab**. Money will calculate a quantity. **Tab** back to price.
**Delete** the price. **Shift+Tab** to get back to quantity. Edit to round
the quantity (typically to three decimal places). Hit **Enter**. Money will
use the precise quantity and amount to calculate an approximate share price.
Done.

"brianOC" <brianinusa[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1111784019.501503.134960[at]o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Here's what I do (M05 and M03): Set up a recurring investment transaction
("Bills - New - Investment Purchase" in M05). Fill in Transfer From, Payment
Amount, Inv. Account and Investment. Leave quantity, price and commission
EMPTY and fill in the total amount, if its a fixed amount each purchase.
Save the new transaction, then use "Bills - Enter into Register" whenever the
purchase has occurred and you know either the quantity or price. Enter one
of them; the other is filled in automatically leaving the total amount
intact.

"brianOC" wrote:

- quote -

My wife's 401K broker's website does not integrate directly with
Money. It doesn't even have the almost as good option of letting you
download and then import the transactions. They have to be entered by
hand. This is not a *huge* hassle, but it does mean entering purchases
5 different investments weekly and I'd like to be able to automate it
somewhat.

My first thought was that I could enter this as recurring investments
in the bills section, but the problem with this is of course that the
price of the investment changes each week. (What would be great is if
the program could realize that the price for buying a certain fund on
March 10 is going to be whatever the closing price of that fund on
March 10 was but I'm pretty sure that's not something it can do at the
moment)

I thought a good compromise would be that I could have a recurring
transaction that was a good guess at the reality.

I.e. - I know the Total will be $30, last week the price of FundA was
$15, so I can set up a recurring transaction to buy 2 * FundA [at] $15
each next week.

Then - I thought - when the time comes I can just edit the individual
instance of the transaction by entering the real price (say $16) into
the box, and if I clear the Quantity box but leave $30 in the Total box
it will automatically divide $30/16 and enter 1.875 in the Quantity
box. Not perfect but definitely quicker than entering the whole thing
by hand.

But this doesn't work. Why?

Because when
(a) the quantity box is empty,
(b) the price box shows $16 and
(c) the cost box shows $30

.... if you hit enter, instead of

(a) changing the (empty) Quantity box to 1.875 and entering a purchase
of 1.875 shares at $16 total $30; Money
(b) zeroes the Cost box so the transaction is entered as a purchase of
0 shares at $16 total $0.

I hope someone reading can follow all that without falling asleep and
tell me is there some other way I can do this, to save me entering all
those transactions by hand?

Thanks in advance,

Brian