From what I can tell, Money stores two sets of asset allocation data for each
investment.

The first set of data is an "all or nothing" value - you can assign in from
a drop down menu that lets you classify any investment as large-cap,
small-cap, bond, etc. The second is an actual breakdown of the 6 asset
categories.

To me, it makes no sense that they would have two different asset class
breakdowns for each investment. Especially when one is black-and-white and
one is almost perfectly flexible. Then, on top of all that, when you are
viewing the asset allocation, use Method 1 to create the spreadsheet and use
Method 2 to create the pie chart. You'd think the guys that created Excel
could figure this out. (I love Excel)

Here's a tip. Use the pie chart. Ignore the rest. The numbers below are
assuming your mutual fund is 100% large-cap most of the time which is not
useful in any way. If the pie chart doesn't seem right, you can update the
allocations manually by going to the Portfolio Manager under Investing Tools
in the Investing tab. Right click the investment you want to edit and click
Investment Details. There, under "Change asset allocation", click the
"Change..." button. Don't be surprised if the data in this resets the next
time you update Money, though.

Hope that helps.



"SandC" wrote:

- quote -

It is still not right in the new update in Money Plus that was just released.
The chart is looking at data that has no relation to that listed below.
Poor support from Microsoft!

"notharrypotter" wrote:

- quote -

Actually this problem is with Money Plus which I just upgraded to. The
charts and the data agreed perfectly with Money 2006 which is the version I
upgraded from. The data comes from the allocation I have chosen for each
investment. The chart allocation looks like it takes mutual funds and breaks
it up into more than one category like the Janus Growth and Income fund is a
actually a blend of large cap and overseas.

"Bill Becker" wrote:

- quote -

If you are still running Money 2007, then there is no hope that this will be
fixed by Microsoft. They almost never issue bug fixes for Money after the
program is released. (I believe that Money 2005 was an exception. They
issued a post-release fix for some serious functionality issues.)

In any event, they have surely abandoned all efforts to fix any version
other than the 2008 version, called Money Plus. If this reporting
inconsistency really bothers you, it might be worth your time to download the
trial version of Money Plus and see if the reporting is improved. If you do
this, be sure you have good backups of your data files and don't uninstall
Money 2007 when you install the trial. Let us know what you find out.

I plan to evaluate the asset allocation reporting in Money Plus, but not
until after the Holidays.
--
Bill Becker


"SandC" wrote:

- quote -

End of November and still the same problem that the pie chart does not agree
with the data below it. Any fix???

"Bill Becker" wrote:

- quote -

Asset allocation has a number of quirks. This is just one of them. I find
that the most reliable way to view asset allocation is to go to Reports,
Asset and Liabilities, Asset Allocation. This is generally pretty close, but
there are some caveats. The biggest one is that all of the asset allocation
reports depend on values that Money downloads for each investment. These
percentages sometimes don't add exactly to 100%, so the asset allocation
report can have slightly different totals than the investment totals in
other reports. Also, Money sometimes inexplicably sets one or more mutual
fund asset classes (e.g. small cap, large cap, bonds) to zero and then the
asset allocation reports are nonsense. Waiting a bit and doing another
online update generally fixes this. As with all Money investment reports
(and especially tax reports) you should always do a sanity check before using
the reported values.
--
Bill Becker


"notharrypotter" wrote:

- quote -

MS-Money 2007 (SP2):

In the report "Compare current and target asset allocations", the pie chart
roll-overs (percentages and amounts) don't match the spreadsheet allocations
just below it.

For example, my bonds show as 27.5% on the chart, but show as 13.5% on the
spreadsheet. What gives?