Hello all -

Can anyone recommend a way to track an asset's change in value, when this can't be tied to a share price?

The specific purpose I have in mind would be to track changes in the value of an Australian superannuation (=pension) fund, which generally just quotes a dollar amount which is the aggregate value of however your money might be invested in shares, funds, etc. (details which they typically withhold from investors, apparently to make life simpler).

So, as far as I can see, I can only enter this type of investment as a fixed asset in terms of a dollar amount which might go up or down, with no purchase/sale events or shares/prices (well, I suppose I could arbitrarily set up a one-time division into units/prices, say 3000 $10 shares for a $30000 balance, divide any change in balance by 3000 and then manually update the resulting unit price, but this seems pretty fiddly).

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance, and by the way, KMM is running without any hitch, skipping between by Win7 (work), Mint12 and Kubuntu platforms. Nice work, developers!

Cheers
Mark

Hi Mark

I also grappled with this dilemma several months ago, for my [also Oz] Superannuation fund / policy. As a consequence of previous job changes earlier in my working life, i have 5 different Super &/or Rollover funds / policies. Four of these are "static" in that they grow [or shrink] only in conjunction with market movements but not with any contributions from me or my employer. These 4 are linked with Units, thus i can track them in KMM as Investments for which i periodically edit the Unit Price & # of Units as per the 6- or 12-monthly Statements i receive. None of that answers your query, i know, but i stated it as context for the following.

The 5th one is "active" not "static" in that it is associated with my present job. My employer contributes 9% of my salary to it, & i contribute [salary-sacrifice] ~10%. The fund manager invests in an array of specific investments with their respective ups & downs, & of course also deducts fees. So this policy has a complex suite of incomings & outgoings that baffled me for a while as the best, or least-worst, way to track & chart in KMM. I eventually ended up with my current arrangement, which is that this policy is an Asset in KMM, not Investments like the other 4, & i simply update its Ledger annually when i receive each Statement. All i do is to then use the "Increase" tab [but once i had to use the "Decrease" tab instead!] & enter the latest net "Amount" value per the Statement.

I'm not entirely happy with this as it does not allow me to "see" the actual investments' performances, given they are masked by the annual cumulative inflows from my employer & myself. However it's better than nothing, which was my alternative for a year or so [i was a long-term Quicken user, then a year-long GnuCash user, b4 discovering KMM; Quicken was clumsy & laborious (& confusing) to track this policy, but did essentially the same thing; GC was simply hopeless for this kind of stuff & so i didn't even try to track this policy in it]. At least with my doing it this way in KMM i can keep a macro if not micro watch over it.

Note that for quite a while after initialy setting up this Super Asset in KMM, i was nonplussed that i simply could not Chart it with the Investment Report options. Eventually when all my troubleshooting failed, i'd actually drafted a question to this site to ask advice, when just b4 sending, the bleedin' obvious struck me; those are *Investment* reports, but my Super was/is in KMM as an Asset, not Investment [silly cow, Steffie!]. Once the penny dropped i simply used a customised Net Worth report, & its Chart works quite nicely to show me a graphical portrait of its progress.

I hope this might help a little?

Regards, Steffie.

Hi Steffie,

Many thanks for the reply - your experiences seem absolutely identical to mine, including the progression of software used! Uncanny.

Again, many thanks for this very useful reply, and my apologies for being so late with *my* reply!

Cheers
Mark