Settings
Within the settings you can customize Investaware to your preferences as well as perform several database tasks, such as backing up your data and restoring a prior backup.
Benchmarks
Here you can choose a default benchmark for the portfolio as well as the 3 major investment classes. This will be the benchmark that is initially shown on the performance page and will be used whenever the summaries need a benchmark for a comparison.
Value at Cost
For some investments, you may not want to value the position based upon the current market price, but rather leave it a the purchase cost. A good example of this is bonds you want to hold until maturity. Since you have no intention of selling them, any market fluctuation will only skew performance. This setting allows you to choose an account + an investment type and the system will leave its value at the cost.
Investment Info
When a new security is imported into Investaware, the system uses a variety of to assign it the type, sector (for equities) as well as country.
For some investments, there is no information available about that security (such as OTC instruments). In those occasions, Investaware will categorize the position as “unknown” within the holdings. You can use this setting to manual update the security’s information.
Linked Pricing
Investaware supports pricing certain derivatives that are linked to marketable securities. An example of this is “market linked securities”.
For those investments, enter the terms of the Investaware will retrieve the underlying security and price the investment according to the terms.
Risk Settings
Investaware supports the 2 most popular risk metrics, downside deviation and drawdown.
You can choose either metric or tell Investaware to use a blend of those calculations when reporting risk.
Database Options
Investaware stores all of your information securely on your iPad. While your privacy is maintained, there is a risk of losing your data if your device is ever lost or damaged. To avoid losing all your history, you can export a copy of your information to be saved elsewhere (such as on iCloud or locally on your computer). This section allows you to export a copy as well as restore a previously exported copy.
Additionally, if you have multiple portfolios you want to maintain on Investaware, you can create additional databases (which we call environments). Within this section you can also switch between environments.
Finally there are advanced features, such as deleting imported data as well as telling Investaware to regenerate its summaries (in case you’ve edited investments and want to see the revisions on the summary page).
Cash Adjustment
Investaware has logic to modify cash for pending transactions, however, several financial institutions are inconsistent with the way they handle pending trades. This section allows you to manually enter a cash amount, which will be reflected throughout the app.
Cost
When the consortium created the OFX specifications, they made the cost of a position optional. Unfortunately that means each institution has the option of leaving it blank.
While Investaware will maintain the cost for new positions and adjust the cost for any additions/relief, it cannot determine the initial cost of positions that were created prior to your first import. This section allows you to manually enter the cost of those initial positions.
Help
You can access the online help manual here.
Show Log
Investaware keeps a log of all the activity within a given session. If you run into an error, this section may help resolve the problem.