Quick Summary
1) Activate the Cash Balance feature if you want to track your portfolio’s cash portion and/or see your portfolio’s detailed cash transactions.
2) Whenever you realize that your DIVIDEND transactions are out of sync, simply click “Sync Cash Balance Dividend” on this page. Or simply check “Auto Cash Balance Dividend Sync” in step 1 and the chance of DIVIDEND transactions going out of sync should very low.
Details
The Cash Balance feature first appeared in 2016. However, less than 10% of the users in StocksCafe have activated this feature. One reason might be because it is not that clear what it is used for and can be confusing to use. Based on the feedback/questions that I have been receiving about it, I have made some tweaks to this feature and would like to use this article to explain how to use it.
What is Cash Balance for?
1) The original intent of Cash Balance is to track the amount of cash you currently have in your trading accounts. This assumes that when you create multiple portfolios in StocksCafe, each portfolio would correspond to a single trading account (per currency).
2) It is also widely used by users to keep a historical record of all cash transactions.
How does it work?
There are various transaction types, namely: DEPOSIT, WITHDRAWAL, FEES and DIVIDEND. The first three types are pretty straightforward and rarely cause any confusion. Do read the quick guide in this article to learn how to use.
DIVIDEND transaction type is the one where users regularly have questions. Let me explain how it works.
a) Everyday, at midnight Singapore time, StocksCafe (or rather a cron job) will check if you have any dividends with a Pay Date that falls on that day. If yes, the DIVIDEND transaction will be added.
b) So, it can potentially go out of sync if the cron job fails for whatever reason or if the PayDate was wrong or if dividend was duplicated or should not be there.
What is “Sync Cash Balance Dividend” on this page?
This action will essentially re-populate/sync (i.e. delete all and add again) dividend transactions in Cash Balance based on your transactions history.
What is “Auto Cash Balance Dividend Sync” on this page?
If you check the box for “Auto Cash Balance Dividend Sync”, it means that whenever you add/remove/update your portfolio transaction, the “Sync Cash Balance Dividend” will automatically run in the background to ensure that the DIVIDEND transactions are still correct after the edit.
Hopefully, this feature will now be easier to use. Do continue to give me feedback on how to make it even better.
Happy investing!
Hi Evan, would it be possible include a only certain period (eg: Jan 2020 to May 2020) when we click on “Sync Cash Balance Dividend” and not the entire transaction history in order to better track the movement of dividend going back into the cash balance.
This will allow a better live update of the amount currently within your “Cash Balance”.
I second the previous comment by @anzo321.
I have removed some dividend payouts from my cash transactions because they were non-cash transactions. Could the sync cash balance be used to only sync transactions which were not already manually removed?
@anzo321 I see. Can you create a ticket for this?
@xadiq I am more reluctant to do this because it is more complex as I would at least need to 1) Remember the deleted cash transactions 2) Create UI for users to see and manage all the deleted cash transactions in case they change their mind.
I suppose doing what @anzo321 can mitigate your issue right?
Hi Evan, noted will proceed to create a ticket on this and input this page as the link.
@evankoh – actually yes, I think that could work too. Thank you !
Hi, why is it my cash balance still in red even though I have input “deposit” money into my account?