Personal Plus 2017 Superannuation Accounting

Ross Baldwin

When purchasing bonds, there is often a provision needed for Accrued Interest. This is the sum of interest that has already been accrued by the seller. I would expect this cost to appear in the reports under the title of ACCRUED INTEREST. However, these costs appear under MiscExpX title. This description does not appear anywhere in the List of Categories. I can find no way of changing the title to the correct description.  Anyone else with this problem

Karl Baker

I have been trying to use PP to record bond buy and sell contracts and coupon payments for a few years now. You will find that there are numerous issues and that the support for bond transactions is very cludgy. I know the issue you mention and don't know of a fix. I have asked similar questions several times in this forum and never had a response. Bonds are a much more prevalent investment class in the USA; I suspect that Reckon never fully implemented Quicken's support for recording bond transactions. Sorry I can't be of more help - I will watch for any response to your post with interest.

Peter Jenke

On a related note, whilst there is a "Bonds Bought" transaction option, there is no "Bonds Sold" which means selecting a "Shares Sold" option as the only way of effecting the transaction. I've also found it too difficult to try and buy foreign currency bonds and have given up each time. The only way I am able to handle the couple of $USD bonds I hold is to do a manual currency conversion for each transaction/price update and treat them as $AUD bonds. Unless someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Ross Baldwin

Hi Peter
You are correct that there is no facility in the programme for sale of bonds. But as there is no accrued interest, and no broker charges, that part works okay for me.  I have opened a new Reckon Account in USD, in fact One Bond account and One bank account. The purchases and sales in USD work okay. Slight adjustments may be required each transaction to get the currency exchange correct. This only really occurs when funds from AUD are used to buy bonds in USD. The other problem that arises is the Performance reports. There is clearly an error in the programme. Some time ago, I added bonds to the accounts, and the programme correctly handled these additions. However, in the report section, the ADDED price is reduced by a factor of 10. So for example Bonds added amounting to $10,000 appear in the report as $1,000
The programme has a number of deficiencies. Disappointing as one has to keep paying each year to be able to use the programme.

Peter Jenke

Thanks for that. I think that what affects me with the $USD bonds is that I'm trying to show them in my one SMSF account so I want them to show in $AUD. That's where I've found it all too hard. You're right though, the fact that there isn't a "Bond Sold" option is not really an issue, it just would be neater.

Paul Blake

MiscExpX is "Miscellaneous Expense and Transfer". It's one of the in-built transaction types that Reckon uses for handling share and managed fund etc transactions. You can't avoid it. If you want the amounts to appear in another category (e.g. for tax purposes) you'll need to journal out the amounts. I use a specially set up Journal Adjustments account (that always has a zero balance) to manage the transfers. Any share etc transaction you generate will use one of these special categories.

Ross Baldwin

Thanks for the comment, but I think it misses the point.  Accrued Interest is the interest that is in fact earned by the Bond Seller. The bond buyer receives all the interest due in the relevant period. For example. Say the bond is purchased 3 months after the last interest payment and interest is paid every six months. The buyer then receives 6 months interest when it becomes due. The accrued interest, which is an expense goes to the Sell as compensation for the foregone interest during the period that he owned the bond.  The problem comes with the reporting. The total interest shown in the reports represents all the interest received. BUT it should be the interest received LESS the Accrued interest. 
The Software should recognise this requirement, I believe.

At worst, it should report Accrued Interest as it is shown in the Transaction Input. 

Peter Jenke

Ross, I agree. It's been a constant irritation for me as well.

Karl Baker

Hi all. Peter, sounds like I have responded over the years to Quicken/Reckons bond transaction the same way you do - I convert all USD dollar bond transactions to AUD manually. Ross - I contemplated your approach of a separate USD dollar account but went with my approach so all my various investment class transactions where in one account. The issues I have never satisfactorily solved are (among others!): A) recording coupon payments for annuity style corporate bonds where the coupon comprises both an interest and a principal payment (I record these as two transaction; interest component as 'record an income event's, principal component as 'return of capital's); b) dealing with the accrued interest component of a secondary market bond purchase transaction, where there is no facility to itemise the capital and accrued interest amounts separately. Here I have always had to record a bond buy transaction using the gross price, which of course skews performance reporting. These issues are frustrating but I think unavoidable with no sign that Reckon have any plans to remedy such issues.

Ross Baldwin

Hi All, Comments from Karl are very interesting,
I have USD and Pound  bank accounts and want to keep them in that currency. The Quicken reporting system makes are reasonable job of converting at any given time to AUD. So I am happy to keep the USD and Pound Sterling Bond accounts separately, and use them in conjunction with the bank accounts
On the other issues that you raised, I concur completely. I use the same method for annuity style bonds. The purchase price of the bonds, if there is accrued interest, is as you say skewed. The reporting system is very basic and simply not good enough for a commercial software package that continues to charge on an annual basis, without improving the software to an acceptable standard. 
Unfortunately, I have yet to find another Software package that correctly records SMSF transactions, I continue to look and communicate with various suppliers, who seem mainly interested in taking over the management of an individuals SMSF accounting and reporting.

Shane Smith

I also decided to use Return of Capital for the non-taxable maturing amount of the T Bills I bought, and Record an Income Event > Interest/Coupon for the interest component.