How Do I Choose the Best Investment Portfolio Management Software?

When choosing investment portfolio management software to help keep track of your investments and interests, it is important to be sure the program contains all of the essential components necessary to manage all of your accounts. Most financial experts recommend choosing a software program that includes investments records management, automated price updates, and hierarchical portfolios. You may also wish to look for graphing and reports functions as well as capital gains reporting features. This type of investment software is designed to provide the user with a comprehensive look at their investments, available funds, and current market trends at a glance without the help of a financial professional.

Good investment portfolio management software almost always includes a feature for investments records management, which allows the user to record an unlimited list of account transactions of investments and different portfolios. This feature is also capable of keeping track of financial transfers, stock purchases, redemptions, and distributions from your various accounts. Information can be entered into the system manually, from the user's mutual fund company, or from other formats.

Many people prefer to use investment portfolio management software that includes a function for updating prices automatically. This feature is ideal for staying abreast of the latest stock market price changes and on what market prices have done historically. The investment portfolio software pulls this information automatically from Internet resources.

Another feature often sought after when it comes to investment portfolio management software is hierarchical portfolios. With this feature, the user can store information pertaining to as many unique portfolios as they wish. There are typically features in place to allow for subcategories of portfolio information as well as space for graphs and other investment tools within each portfolio file.

Graphing functions are incredibly important when selecting the best investment portfolio management software for your needs. In most cases, this feature is set up to allow the user to input the data and choose a graph format, and the system develops the graph quickly and correctly. Some software programs offer several graph template versions to provide the user with the most effective format for their needs.

The ability to prepare reports in a variety of useful styles is also advantageous when selecting the best investment portfolio management software. You can choose a software program that allows you to choose which portfolio you want information from, how it is to be presented, and gives you the ability to add graphs and other visual aids. Like the graph functions, most high quality systems provide different customizable formats for the user's convenience.