SGXcafe Now Computes Your Cash Balance As Well!

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One of the recent most-voted feature in Friends of SGXcafe is having a cash component to track your cash balance. It is a seemingly easy feature, but was actually tedious to implement because it intertwines with several other existing components in SGXcafe.

What is Cash Balance?
Easily track the amount of cash you currently have on hand after you buy or sell stocks, receive dividends, or deposit or withdraw funds from your trading account.

Quick Guide to Using Cash Balance:
1. Enter the amount of cash you presently have into your portfolio to kickstart the tracking.
2. When you add a new portfolio transaction, there is a “Add to Cash Transactions” option. Select this option and the new balance will be automatically updated for you.
3. For all stocks that you hold (including those before Cash Balance came along), dividends are automatically added to your balance on the pay date.

The above is a simple guide which should be able to get you started.
For those interested in more details, here is a more in-depth explanation of the Cash Balance feature:

1) Firstly, to be aligned with other components of SGXcafe, Cash Balance also supports multiple portfolios. You can have a separate Cash Balance for each portfolio.

2) You can view details of the cash transactions and also remove certain cash transactions if you want to here.

3) You can edit past portfolio transactions to be linked to a cash transaction. Once they are linked, whenever you update the portfolio transaction, the associated cash transaction will also be updated automatically.

4) For users who perform dividend overrides, when you add collected dividends, you now have the option to also add it as a cash transaction. If the dividend override is updated, the associated cash transaction will also be updated accordingly automatically.

5) From today onwards, at around 12am Singapore time every day, dividends that are known to be paid that day will be automatically added to your cash transactions.

6) These automatically-added dividends associated cash transactions will be ignored if you have a corresponding dividend override that removes that collected dividend.

I understand that at first glance, this might be too much to take in, but as you use the Cash Balance feature, you should be able to better understand how it works. As usual, feel free to feedback to me about this feature!

p.s.: Feeling so proud of Joseph Schooling!

20 Comments

Leave a Reply to angelzsoul Cancel reply

  • Great feature ! Can I check if the computations for XIRR, Returns etc all take into account the cash balance ?

  • @thevaluefund, nope. cash balance is not considered in XIRR and returns computations. Why would you want them to be?

    @eddy, it is by default cash balance for each portfolio. That is if you create cash portfolio, SRS portfolio and CPF portfolio then you can sort them accordingly.

  • @evankoh – Most investors view cash as a drag on performance. Computing ROI/XIRR etc with cash is complicated. However, it is useful on a unit portfolio share valuation methodology. Remember this ? I suggested this approach before in April and this is how investment clubs and hedge fund/trust managers measure their performance. 1 unit of share is worth $X.XX and make up of a composite of your shares. Each time you add cash, This way, holding large cash is a drag.

  • @thevaluefund, ah.. I remember. “Computing ROI/XIRR etc with cash is complicated.” => One naive way is simply assume the total invested is (current portfolio value + cash) and returns is simply the returns from the portfolio assuming that cash holding do not earn interest. Anyway, do add this to the friend section 🙂

  • @evankoh, I prefer the unit share method. It unitizes everything and easily. U just have to determine the cash injection and buy-in date (MTM usu). Just my 2cts worth. Will add to friends section later.

  • Hi Evan! Can I check with you if the cash balance only includes the buy/sell cash transactions as it seems that the dividends received are not automatically included? Thanks!

  • Hi Gamstong, dividends received should be added at paydate. For dividends where I do not have their paydate then it will not be added, but it should be rare.

  • apparently entering dividend in override automatically added entry to “collected” thus becoming double entry. data computation inaccurate thereafter.

  • @lzh1983, by double entry I believe you meant that there are two dividends on the same day (one override manually by you and another automatically by the SGXcafe).

    Previously, system generated dividends are only skipped if user explicitly remove with override (same stock, same ExDate). It seems reasonable to also skip it if user explicitly add with override (same stock, same ExDate). Hence I have update SGXcafe with such capabilities. Your double entry problem should be resolve with this update.

  • @evankoh, may I suggest u introduce a switch to let a user toggle the auto crediting of cash balance from dividends. Each person has its own way and it makes it confusing. U also need a way for someone to key in a starting value as the dividends only start from XXX date.

  • @thevaluefund, if I understand you correctly, you are saying two things here right?

    1) Currently, cash balance is auto update as dividends paydate are reached. You are suggesting that we have a switch to turn that off?

    2) “U also need a way for someone to key in a starting value as the dividends only start from XXX date.”
    Would this be what you are looking for? => https://www.sgxcafe.com/personal/portfolio/toaddcashtransactions
    You can enter the current cash you hold in each portfolio through here.

  • U mean its already updated? I had just startes to use this last night on my pc and it seems the computation is doubled. So maybe i check again tonight and see how it goes

  • @evankoh, I find myself deleting cash transaction from dividends monthly. Hope u can create a toggle in the profile settings to allow tracking of cash. Or in the longer term, implement a per share valuation concept to allow us to track the performance like a hedge fund.

  • @aldraylow, create two portfolios (within the same account. i.e under aldraylow) and manage them separately.

  • The link for point 1 under “Quick Guide to Using Cash Balance” is broken. Seems like you changed the domain before.

Evan Koh

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