Synchronization between your portfolio’s “Prices” view and its historical transaction log in the “Transactions” view is important in order to display an accurate historical chart of the portfolio’s value. When a portfolio is out of sync with its transactions, the values in the portfolio’s chart will not correspond to the values in the “Prices” view.
StockMarketEye does its best to automatically keep your portfolios and transactions in sync. However, there are times when the “Prices” view and “Transactions” view can get out of sync. For these situations, StockMarketEye provides a portfolio synchronization tool that can help bring them back in sync.
The portfolio’s value chart displays the historical values of your portfolio. It does this by playing back the transactions of the portfolio, one day at a time, in order to chronologically build the portfolio and record its value on a given day. If the portfolio in the “Prices” view and the historical transactions are out of sync, the Portfolio Value chart will display values that do not agree with the values you see in the “Prices” view. Thus the synchronization process is required so that there is less confusion.
There are 2 main situations when portfolio synchronization is necessary.
If necessary, the portfolio synchronization tool will be started automatically by StockMarketEye the first time you want to view the portfolio’s chart.
You can also run the tool manually from the “Portfolio -> Portfolio Synchronization...” menu.
The portfolio synchronization tool walks you through the synchronization process, explaining the steps in separate pages.
Clicking on the “Finish” button on any page will start the synchronization process using default settings for any options that have not yet been selected.
The tool’s intro page explains a bit about how the tool works. Click “Next” when ready to move on to the next page.
On this page you can select the type of synchronization you would like to run.
There are normally 2 types of synchronization possible, unless you have split transactions in your portfolio, in which case, only the first type is available.
Synchronize Portfolio from Transactions - Recommended
This method chronologically applies the transactions of your portfolio to build a new portfolio. The new portfolio will replace the current portfolio (“Prices” view).
You can preview how this new portfolio will look by clicking on the “Preview” button (pointed to by the red arrow in the image).
After this synchronization is finished, you may need to adjust the portfolio’s cash balance. You can do this using the menu: “Portfolio -> Add Cash Transaction” in order to add or subtract from the cash balance. Be sure to select the appropriate date for the transaction (typically before the first buy transaction).
Synchronize Transactions from Portfolio
This is the opposite of the recommended method. The transactions of your portfolio will be updated to correspond to the items from the “Prices” view. This method is normally not recommended as differences can remain between the “Prices” view and the “Transactions” view.
This method can be useful, however, if your transactions and portfolio differ significantly. This could have occurred with older versions of StockMarketEye which did not maintain the transactions log or allowed transactions to be removed or modified without removing or modifying the corresponding portfolio item.
NOTE: This method will not be available if your transactions contain any splits.
Licensed versions of StockMarketEye will allow you to create a backup of your data before starting the synchronization.
Making a backup is recommended, at least the first time you run the synchronization tool. Having a backup available allows you to get your portfolio back to the pre-synchronization form, in case the changes made by the synchronization tool were not to your liking.
Click the “Finish” button to start the backup and synchronization process.
After synchronization, the portfolio chart should correspond to the totals line of your portfolio’s Prices view. That is, in the portfolio’s chart, the value on the most recent date should correspond to the “Market Val” in the totals line of your portfolio’s Prices view (minus any gains from the current day’s trading).
However, there are cases where your portfolio’s Prices total can still look out-of-sync with the value from the chart. One of the main reasons for this is if your portfolio currently contains a symbol for which historical quote data is not available. In this case, when calculating the value of the portfolio on any given day, StockMarketEye will simply use the purchase price of that position, rather than the actual value of that position on that day. If the current value of that position is higher or lower than the purchase value, that difference will be carried over into the difference between the portfolio’s Prices total line and the value from the chart.
