Managing Your Investments No Matter Where You Are

Managing your investments is no easy task, but StockMarketEye can give you high and low level views of all your investments together, helping you make informed investment decisions faster.

A couple of question we often get from users are:

• How can I get my investments into StockMarketEye?
• How can I copy my investment data to another computer so I don’t have to enter it twice?

To better answer those questions, let’s look at the following graphic.

Brokerage Import, File Import or Manual Entry

Before you can get started syncing your investment data to another computer or device, you’ll need to get that investment data into StockMarketEye. For many users, the easiest way to initially get your investments into StockMarketEye is via the Brokerage Import feature. Importing from one of the supported brokerages makes it quick to get started and easy to maintain as your investments evolve. Unfortunately, this “direct connect” standard for downloading data from brokerages that StockMarketEye, Quicken and other financial programs use, is only supported by some U.S. brokerages.

If your brokerage does not support the “direct connect” standard or your accounts are with non-U.S. brokerages, you can instead import your investments into StockMarketEye via certain types of investment files. Most brokerages give you the option of downloading your data for use in another program. Often they refer to this as something like “Download for Quicken” or “Download for Microsoft Money”. Downloading your data in this way will give you a QIF or OFX/QFX file which you can import into StockMarketEye.

It is also possible to manually enter your holdings and transactions. StockMarketEye has easy to use manual transaction entry windows that support virtually all transaction types (buy/sell, dividends, capital gains, return of capital, splits, company actions, transfers, cash transactions, etc).

Syncing Your Data To Other Computers/Devices

Once you’ve gotten your investments into StockMarketEye, you can easily sync them to other computers and devices. For example, you could sync to your wife or husband’s computer so they can follow along too. Or sync it to your computer at the office so you can track your investments while at work. You can even sync it to your iOS (iPhone/iPad) device so you can take it with you on the go.

Syncing to the other devices is supported by the StockMarketEye On-Line Sync service. This is a “cloud” based service that we provide to make it easy to follow your investments anywhere you want to.

The basic principal of the on-line sync service is that the service stores a copy of your data, which can then be downloaded by any version of StockMarketEye that you use. Your data in the on-line sync service is only accessible to you. The data is sent and stored securely using strong, industry standard encryption.

Use of the on-line sync service is completely optional. StockMarketEye’s other features do not depend on the on-line sync in any way. If you only use StockMarketEye on one computer, there’s no need to setup or use the on-line sync. But if you run StockMarketEye on more than one computer or device, it is an easy way to keep your data updated on all of them.

NOTE: Our on-line sync service is not the only way of transferring your data to another computer. It is also possible to use the backup/restore method. This involves making a backup of your StockMarketEye data on one computer, copying the backup file to the other computer and restoring it with StockMarketEye on that computer. Typically, this method is best for one-off transfers, such as if you upgrade your computer and want to move your data to the new computer.

My Typical StockMarketEye Workflow

Here’s how I typically manage my investments in StockMarketEye, using both the brokerage import and the on-line sync.

1. I have a main computer where make updates to my investments, create regular backup files, etc. I call this my “master” computer.
2. Periodically, I will “update from brokerage” (menu: Portfolio -> Update from Brokerage…) for each of my portfolios that are mirroring an account at a brokerage. This pulls in the latest transactions for that account and applies them to the StockMarketEye portfolio.
3. I like to verify that the transactions were reported correctly by the brokerage. Typically there is no need to correct anything (if you have already updated the “placeholder” transactions that were created during the initial import), but in some cases, especially concerning splits, it may be necessary to make changes. See our blog post on the recent Apple split for an example.
4. Once everything looks good, I use the on-line sync (either the standard “Start synchronization now”, or the “Push to Account” in the “Other Synchronization Actions”). This sends my data to the on-line sync service and stores it there.
5. Later, when I’m at my other computer or on my iPhone, I’ll typically use the “Pull from Account” synchronization to replace the data in StockMarketEye with the data in my on-line sync account. I could also use the standard “Start synchronization now”, but since I maintain a “master” copy on one computer, the “Pull” sync on the other computers makes more sense, preventing any inadvertent changes I may have made on the other computers from being mixed up with the “master” data.

You don’t need to keep a “master” copy of your data on one computer like I do. The standard sync of StockMarketEye’s on-line sync service is built to handle updates from any computer or device, merging them together so you always get the most recent version.

StockMarketEye is a powerful, but easy to use tool for managing and monitoring all your investments in one place. Using the brokerage import it’s quick to get started, while the on-line sync lets you easily keep your data on multiple computers so you’re never far away from what’s happing with your investments.

You can find more information on the brokerage import and on-line synchronization in our User’s Guide.

Nick