Instructions

Intro | First Steps | Investment Types | Position List | Managing Portfolios | Creating Items | Updating Prices | Entering Transactions | Item Summary | Portfolio Summary | Investment News | Alerts | Financial Agenda | Simulation | Filters | Home Widgets | Page Capture | File Import | Purchase Info


Introduction

InvestControl is a complete investment manager that can track multiple portfolios containing different types of assets. In addition to market prices, transactions can be entered in order to provide a broad view of your portfolio, including market value, gains and losses, risk/institution allocation etc.

The built-in RSS aggregator downloads and filters news that are relevant to your portfolio, while the financial agenda keeps track of important events and reminders related to your assets.

InvestControl also provides alert notifications for changes in prices, market value or gain/losses, for each asset or for the entire portfolio. Home widgets are also provided for a quick overview of your portfolios, assets and latest news.


First Steps

These are the common steps to start using the app:

1. Create one or more portfolios to group your assets and indices (optional).

2. Create items and associate them to the portfolio(s). If you have assets in foreign currencies, create first the corresponding currencies so that you can assign them to those assets.

3. Record all transactions made for each asset.

4. Check the asset and portfolio summaries to see how your investments are performing.

5. Adjust your usage preferences in the app settings, like home currency, update settings and news sources.

6. Explore additional features like filters, alerts and widgets.

The following sections explain these and more procedures in more detail.


Investment Types

Currently the following investment types are supported:

Depending on each asset type and region, quotes can be obtained automatically from quote providers, entered manually or extracted from web pages, as explained below.

 

Position List

In InvestControl, you can track assets that you effectively own and also "watch only" items. This second group may include for example stocks, indices or currency rates you are currently tracking.


Depending on each case, you will see different data in the main list. For example, a stock you own will show last quote date/value/change, quantity of shares owned, current market value/daily change and total gain or loss. For a cash account, you will only see the current balance, and so on.


Tap an item to access its summary screen, from where it is possible to edit it and perform several actions.


Swipe down from the top of the list to refresh prices of items set to update via quote provider or page capture.


It is possible to export the data you see in this list to compatible apps in CSV format using Menu/Tools/Export.

 

Managing Portfolios

Assets, indices and rates can be assigned to portfolios like "Watch List", "Retirement Savings" or "Short-Term" for better tracking and organization and to enable additional features like Goals.

To assign an item to one or more portfolios, access its summary screen and tap the third button at the bottom. To view all items assigned to a given portfolio select it in the list at the top of the main screen.

Selecting Summary will open a consolidated view with all portfolios. Selecting a portfolio from this view will show its corresponding items.

To create a new portfolio, use Left Menu/Portfolio/+. In addition to the portfolio name, you can optionally inform a target value and a date when you hope to reach that amount (InvestControl will track the portfolio value against this goal in the portfolio summary). If desired, you can also inform the average amount you plan to invest monthly in this portfolio, and let InvestControl track it against the amount deposited monthly in any cash accounts from this portfolio.


If you are starting to use the app and do not have a significant transaction history yet, you can set a target return rate that will be used for projections instead of the real average rate achieved. You can later remove this rate and let InvestControl use the real rate, which is constantly updated based on the portfolio's performance.


From the Portfolio menu you can also edit and remove a portfolio. When a portfolio is removed, you can opt to remove also all assets assigned exclusively to it.


Total market value, daily change and gain/loss for the current portfolio are displayed at the bottom of the main screen. Tap the chart button located in that region to access the portfolio summary (see below).


Note: The value and gains/losses of an asset will be reflected in all portfolios it belongs to, however the total value of all portfolios, shown in the summary screen, will not be duplicated.

 

Creating Items


To create a item, tap + at the bottom right of the screen and fill the information available for the type chosen:


Type: Can be stock, fund, bond, option, cash, index, currency or "other" (generic). Cannot be changed after the item has been created.


Name: A friendly title for the item (for example, company name, fund name etc). Depending on the asset type, a list of suggestions will be displayed as you type.


Symbol/Abbrev.: Required when update mode is "Quote Provider". Some stocks may require a stock exchange prefix as used by Yahoo! Finance (ie. "PETR4.SA", "AGI.TO"), especially if the same symbol is used in different markets.


Currency Code: Required for currencies, can be filled automatically when an existing currency is selected in Name field. A reference list is available here.


Fund Composition: You can specify here how a mutual fund is allocated (% in stocks, bonds, money market, real estate and other investments). Used when calculating portfolio allocation.


Currency: If the item is traded in a foreign currency, select it here to convert values to local currency. You can choose an existing currency or create a new one.


Units per Price: Can be informed when the price is given for a certain number of shares, or is a proportion of the currency. Specially useful for stocks quoted in pences, when this value must be set to 100.


Expiration/Maturity: For options, this field is used for ITM/OTM calculation; for bonds, used for yield calculation. For other assets, it is used to determine liquidity. The expiration date also affects price updates (see below).


Liquid only at maturity: If checked, the investment will be considered "liquid" after the date above is reached (used in the portfolio summary).


Coupon/Interest Rate: Bond annual coupon/interest, used for yield calculation.


Face/Par Value: Bond face value, used for yield calculation.


Strike Price: For options only.


Underlying Asset: The base stock an option refers to. Used for ITM/OTM calculation (options only).


Option Type: Call or Put (options only).


Currency Code: For currencies only, it is the currency code according to ISO 4217. Examples: USD, EUR, AUD, BTC (Bitcoin) etc.


Weight / Base Portfolio: Desired weight of this asset in relation to the base portfolio specified and the other assets in it. Used in the Asset Details report to calculate the ideal amount which should be invested in the asset.


Risk Level: Used to calculate the risk allocation of your portfolio. For example, you may use "low" for bonds, "high" for blue chip stocks, "very high" for small caps, "moderate" for balanced funds, or other personal criteria.


Update mode: Specifies how prices will be updated for this item (more details later in this document).


Web Page: URL where general information about this asset can be found.


Market Sector: Used for asset classification in the portfolio report.


Institution: Bank or broker where the investment is held. Used to calculate portfolio allocation.


Field 1 and Field 2: Using these custom fields, which can be renamed in app settings, you can provide other asset classifications you might like to see in the portfolio summary (ex. subtype, country etc).


Tags: Custom tags can be assigned to assets and totalized in the portfolio summary.


Archived: Check this option to hide the item in all lists and selectors. Archived items are only shown again in the item list if "Archived" is specified in Menu/Filter.


It is also possible to add one or more stock symbols at once using option Tools/Quick Stock Entry, found in the main menu.

 

Updating Prices


Depending on each asset type and where its price information is available, you can choose to update it manually, from a quote provider or extracting it from a web page.


Quote Provider: Updates via quote provider are available for items like stocks, indices, currencies and some funds. Symbols must be informed as used in Yahoo! Finance.


Page capture: In some cases, InvestControl can extract data from web pages that contain asset values, prices, indices or rates. This can be useful for options, funds or commodities not available from the quote provider (see instructions bellow).


Manual Update: In this mode, InvestControl never retrieves quotes automatically. This may apply for assets for which online updates are not available and also for investments you don't want to update anymore, but that you still wish to keep in the program. To update a price manually, access its summary screen and tap the first button at the bottom, then inform its current price and optionally its previous price (for daily change calculation).


Items set to update via quote provider or page capture are automatically refreshed as defined in app settings. You can also trigger the update by swiping down from the top of the main list.


Note: Assets automatically stop to update when their expiration dates are reached, regardless of update mode.

If you run into issues when updating prices, please consult the FAQ page.

 

Entering Transactions


In order to track your portfolio status, InvestControl requires all transactions involving your investments to be entered in the app. To do this, select Left Menu/Transactions. While in the Transactions screen, select the desired asset from the list and press + to add a transaction.


Each asset type allows a certain set of transactions, like Buy, Sell, Deposit, Withdrawal etc. For transactions that require a number of shares, unit price and total amount, you just need to inform two of these fields, as the third is calculated automatically.


Most activities also allow specifying a source or target cash account. For example, when buying stocks you may specify a broker account as the source where the corresponding amount will be deducted from, or as a target when entering dividends received. In those cases, the same transaction appears in the list of transactions of both sides (the asset itself and the source/target account).


Fees or taxes originated by a buy/sell transaction must be entered as a separate transaction of type "Fee/Tax". However, InvestControl can start this transaction automatically and suggest a default fee (absolute or percentage), if specified in program settings.


Transactions set with a future date (scheduled transactions) are supported and are not considered in the portfolio value until their date is reached (to view these transactions select Future in the Period menu).


Two special transactions ("Adjustment (+)" and "Adjustment (-)") are provided for occasional adjustments in the portfolio value when there is a difference between the current value shown in the app and the real market value, whose origin is unknown or cannot be expressed using one of the other transactions. It is also possible to generate this adjustment from the summary screen (tap the fourth button at the bottom and inform the new market value; InvestControl will calculate the difference and suggest an adjustment transaction which you can edit as needed).


InvestControl supports recurring transactions, like programmed buys, deposits or taxes. When a transaction is set to repeat, the app will automatically create a copy of it when a new period starts (you can edit the copy later if needed). If you no longer wish the transaction to repeat, locate the latest copy of it and set the frequency back to one time. When creating recurring dividends and fees, it is possible to declare the future value as a percentage of the current market value. For recurring buys and sells, you can let the app calculate the future transaction value based on the latest price for the asset.


Foreign currencies: Except for cash accounts, all transactions that contain an amount must be in the home currency regardless of the asset's currency. For example, if you are trading US stocks but your local currency is EUR, you must inform the total amount for buys, sales, dividends and fees in EUR, while keeping the stock price in USD (InvestControl will suggest the amount based on the last exchange rate recorded, as long as you inform the quantity and price). Only cash accounts in local currency can be used as the origin or destination in those transactions.


Cash account transactions (deposits and withdrawals), on the other hand, are kept in their original currency. When there is another account as the origin or destination, it must have the same currency.

Transactions currently displayed can be exported to a CSV file, using Menu/Export. You can also import transactions from a CSV file in the same format using Menu/Import. More information can be found ahead in this document.

 

Item Summary


Tap any item in the main list to see detailed information about it. When in the details screen you can navigate among assets by swiping left or right.

The amount of data displayed varies depending on item type and if you own the investment or not. For instance, for stocks InvestControl will display details like close price, volume etc. If you own the stock, you will see also quantity of shares, market value, total gain/loss etc. Other assets may show specific data like the current yield for bonds, ITM/OTM indicators for options, and so on. Info displayed may include the following:


Last Price: Last known price obtained from the quote provider, via Page Capture or entered manually.


Date: Date when price was obtained.


Change: Last price change as absolute value and percentage.


Last Close: Closing price for the previous date.


Day High/Low: Minimum/maximum price reached in the current date.


W52 High/Low: Minimum/maximum price reached in the last year.


Volume: Total number of shares traded in the current date.


Expiration: Absolute and relative time left until maturity/expiration date.


Current Yield: Current yield based on annual interest and current price (bonds only).


Yield to Maturity: Total return anticipated on a bond if it is held until it matures (bonds only).


Shares/Quantity: Total number of shares currently owned.


Current Value: Current market value based on last known price.


Total Buys: Total amount bought since first trade.


Total Sales: Total amount sold since first trade.


Dividends/Interest: Total amount received as dividends or interest since first trade.


Fees/Taxes: Total amount paid in fees and taxes since first trade.


Average Price: Average price paid per share.


Break-Even Price: Share price beyond what gains are perceived, considering purchase price, fees and dividends.


Holding Period: Total time elapsed since first trade.


Total Gain/Loss: Total gain/loss based on current price per share, dividends and fees.


Realized Gain/Loss: Total amount effectively earned/lost due to sales, dividends, fees/taxes already received/paid.


Unrealized Gain/Loss: Theoretical amount earned/lost if shares are sold at current market price.


Total Return: Total return rate since first trade, considering current price per share, dividends and fees.


Annual Return: Annualized return rate.


Real Annual Return: Annualized return rate minus inflation rate.


Opportunity Cost/Peformance Gain: Theoretical gain or loss rate considering a scenario where the amount had been invested in something indexed to the base interest rate.


Target Allocation: If a weight and a base portfolio is defined for the asset, the app will calculate the ideal allocation of this asset in relation to the base portfolio, including the target percentage, amount invested and quantity of shares left (based on current price) to reach that amount.

The following financial info, when available, can also be displayed if option "Obtain extra data" is enabled in app settings:

Price/Earnings

Dividend Yield

Yield on Cost

Price to Book

Return on Equity (ROE)

Profit Margin

Debit to Equity

EV/EBITDA

The report also lists the latest transactions for the asset, its active alerts, upcoming events and latest news. Tap the little arrow next to the section title to open the corresponding screen (transactions, alerts, events or news).


You can use the Edit button at the top of the screen to modify the item, and the Share button to export an image of the summary to compatible apps. It is also possible to create a PDF version of it.


Using the toolbar at the bottom, you can perform the following actions: update current price, create a transaction, assign portfolios, adjust market value, create an alert, create an event and clone the item.

 

Portfolio Report


The portfolio report can be accessed using Left Menu/Report or the button located at the bottom-right corner of the main screen. It contains summarized information about all portfolios (if activated from the portfolio summary view) or for the portfolio currently selected, in the form of tables and charts, as follows:


Position&Gains: Current market value, total gain and return rate for the portfolio.


Portfolio Allocation: Shows the total amount allocated in each portfolio (available when activated from the summary view).


Composition: Shows the amount allocated in each asset. If a relative weight has been assigned to the assets which have the current portfolio as their base portfolio, a second chart will be shown with the ideal asset allocation.


Type Allocation: Shows the amount distribution according to investment type.


Sectors: Overall allocation by market sector.


Institutions: Investment allocation by financial institution (bank, broker).


Risk: Amount allocation according to asset risk (very low to very high).


Custom Fields: Amount allocated according to the two user-defined fields.


Tags: Amount allocated according to custom tags assigned to assets.


Liquidity: Shows the amounts available for sale or withdrawal according to the maturity/expiration date defined for each asset.


Profitability: Compares the annual return rate of all assets in the portfolio.


New Deposits: Shows the amount deposited in the last months in cash accounts that belong to the portfolio. If a target monthly amount is set for the portfolio, months in which this value was not reached will appear as red bars. The maximum number of periods shown vary depending on display orientation (portrait/landscape).


Dividends: Displays the total dividends and interest received in the last months, and the average monthly dividends. The maximum number of periods shown vary depending on display orientation.


Value Evolution: Shows the historic market value for the portfolio, starting from the first month of app usage. The maximum number of periods shown vary depending on display orientation. Note: this chart uses snapshots taken from the portfolio at the end of each month which are not updated if changes are made to past transactions later.


Value Projection: Estimates the future value of your portfolio based on the current return rate or on a target rate, minus the inflation rate (if configured this way in Settings/Calculation). If you have set a planned monthly deposit for the portfolio, it will be considered in the projection as well.


Goal: If a target value and date were set for the portfolio, this chart will show how close its current value is . Only available when a portfolio is selected.


You can use the Share button at the top to export an image of the report to compatible apps or Print/Save PDF to send it to a wireless printer or to export it as PDF.

Investment News


InvestControl has a built-in RSS aggregator that can catch the latest news about your investments and display a notification for related news. All you have to do is enter the addresses of your preferred financial feeds in program settings (News Feeds), or choose one or more of the built-in channels available there.


When news related to one of your assets are received, a notification will be displayed. You can tap the notification to see the latest news, or access them at any time selecting Left Menu/News.


When in the News screen, tap Update or swipe down from the top of the list to check for news. Use the buttons below each news item to respectively:

- Read more details from its original source

- Share them via compatible apps

- Save them for future reference (a saved item is not removed when news are refreshed).

 

Filters


It is possible to restrict which items from your portfolios are shown, computed and exported by the app using the Filter button.


You can combine specific types and conditions such as stocks with gains. To disable the filter, just tap the filter button again.

 

Alerts


Alerts are custom notifications that can be triggered when certain conditions are met for individual items or specific portfolios, or for the entire portfolio. For example, you can receive a notification when a stock reaches a certain price or when the total gain of your portfolio reaches a certain amount. After triggered, an alert can be removed, disabled, inverted or adjusted.


When an alert is inverted, it will be triggered again when the opposite of the original condition happens. For example, if an alert is triggered when the price of an asset falls below $10, it will be triggered again if the price rises above $10, when it will be inverted again.


In the same way, you can set an alert to adjust itself by a certain amount after triggered. For example, you can create an alert that notifies you when an asset price reaches $100, and for each time it increases 10%.

You can create alerts using Left Menu / Alerts, and enabled/disable them using the switch at the right side of each alert.

 

Financial Agenda


InvestControl has a built-in financial agenda where you can schedule events and reminders related to assets you own or which you are watching. Such events may include IPO start dates, company result dates, dividend payout dates, government announcements etc. You can also create events as to-do items, like deposits/investments that should be made in certain dates, and optionally set them to repeat monthly.


Events can optionally be associated with an item from your portfolio. In this case, the events will appear also in the summary report.

 

Simulation


The Simulation module allows you to project the performance of an investment while changing variables like duration, start value, deposits, inflation and interest rate.


To run a simulation, select Left Menu/Simulation, enter the known/desired fields and press the button at the right of Start Value, Monthly Deposits, Years or Final Value to have the corresponding value calculated.


You can use the selector at the top to pick current values from an existing asset or portfolio to use in the simulation. If desired, use the "Goal" button at the right top of the screen to save the results as a goal for the portfolio currently selected.

 

Home Widgets


InvestControl provides four home widgets that show basic data about portfolios, assets, upcoming events and latest news.


To install a widget, tap and hold over a free space on your home screen and select it in the list, then tap the arrow at the bottom of the widget to navigate among portfolios, assets, events or news. It is possible to install multiple widgets and point each one to a different asset or portfolio, if you wish to.


By default, data shown in asset/portfolio widgets include current value and gain/loss, but you can choose to hide this information in program settings, for privacy.

 

Page Capture


This update method can be used to extract values/prices from the web page URL provided, using a "capture expression". In its simplest form, the capture expression is a piece of text where the asset price/value is located, with the actual price replaced by a special tag.


For example, let's say the following piece of HTML can be found in the source code of some fund's information page:


<table><td>Quote</td><td>20.3256</td></table>


A suitable capture expression could be:


Quote</td><td>{price}</td>

If the asset's current value is available in the page, you can mark it instead with {value} tag. Then InvestControl will calculate the price by dividing the value by the current number of shares entered in the app.


The app will try to detect the proper decimal separator when capturing the value or price, but it is possible to specify one as part the capture tag. For instance, this tells the app to recognize a comma as the decimal separator: {price ds=,}.

If necessary, you can also use regular expressions to build the capture expression.

If a web page URL is informed along with the capture expression, the app will perform the capture automatically when a global price update occurs. Otherwise capture will be done only in interactive mode (Menu/Tools/Interactive capture). This method allows you to manually log into your broker's account, navigate to the page where the information is available and then start the extraction process.


Since this method involves loading a complete web page at each extraction, you can save some bandwidth by enabling option Update only once a day for assets whose price does not vary in the same day, as most funds. 


For more information, please refer to the FAQ page, the Page Capture Tutorial and the Page Capture Samples.

 

 File Import


When importing transactions from a CSV file, columns must follow this sequence:

Asset, Date, Trans Type1, Price, Quantity, Amount, Account, Notes, Asset Type2

1 Valid transaction types are: BUY, SELL, ADJ+ (adjustment +), ADJ- (adjustment -), DIV (dividend), FEE, DEP (deposit), WIT (withdrawal), LEND, PAY, SPT (split)

2 If the asset does not exist and the asset type is provided, it will be created automatically. Valid asset types are: STOCK, FUND, BOND, OPTION, CASH, LOAN, CURRENCY, REAL ESTATE, OTHER

Not all columns are mandatory, for instance a transaction may not have a source/target account, notes or asset type. In this case the column can be left empty (",,").

To ensure that the format is correct, you can export some transactions to a test file and use it as a model. It is possible to change the column delimiter in app settings.

 

Purchase


The free version allows you to fully evaluate the app for a period of 20 days, after which some features will be disabled. You can restore full functionality via an one-time in-app purchase (Left Menu/Purchase).