by : Stephen L. Nelson, CPA

Microsoft Money's Options dialog box (choose the Tools menu's Options command) includes an Investments tab. The boxes and buttons on the Investments tab let you make changes
to the way in which Money's investment record keeping works.

Setting the Investment Options

The Investment Options box on the Investments tab has two check boxes. The first lets you specify whether Money requires a transfer account for investment transactions you enter. The second lets you indicate that you want to use a first-in, first-out (FIFO)
costing assumption for tracking your investments.
In general, you want to leave these two check boxes empty because that usually works best. You won't necessarily want to require transfer accounts, for example. And you
probably don't want to use a FIFO costing assumption. In any case, you definitely don't want to make changes to these options until you have learned how Money's investment recordkeeping works.

Setting the Portfolio Manager Options

Clicking the Portfolio Manager button on the Investments tab displays the Portfolio Manager Options dialog box. The Portfolio Manager Options dialog box includes four tabs that let you control which information is displayed and how it is displayed in the Portfolio Manager window.

The News & Updates tab lets you specify how frequently the Portfolio Manager updates price information and how it alerts you to new information. For example, you can tell Money how to update price information by selecting the Update Price Information
Every X Minutes check box and then specifying the number of minutes. And you can use the News And Advisor FYI Alert Icons settings to tell Money to use special icons to flag recently received data.
The Display tab check boxes let you specify whether the Portfolio Manager should show portfolio subtotals, a grand total, closed positions, (investments you have sold or transferred), and watch accounts (securities and accounts you've told Money you
want to monitor even though you don't own them). The Display tab also includes buttons you can use to specify whether stock prices should be displayed using fractions or decimal values.
The Status Bar tab lets you specify how Money plots securities information in its bar chart.
Finally, the Currency tab enables you to specify the currency you want your portfolio translated into. If your portfolio is in U.S. dollars, use the default value of US Dollar.
If your portfolio is based on another currency, select the Translate Portfolio Currency United States Values Into box, and then select the appropriate currency from the corresponding list. Select the translation options (prices and/or extended values) you
need from the Portfolio Currency Translation options.

Setting the Investment Categories Options

Clicking the Investment Categories button on the Investments tab displays the Investment Categories dialog box. The Investment Categories dialog box lets you specify which income and expense categories Money should use to record investment income, expenses, capital gains, and losses.

How investment record keeping for income, expenses, gains, and losses works is quite complicated. You should leave these settings alone. If you do know that Money's investment record-keeping conventions are wrong for your specific situation-again,
this is very unlikely-you can use this dialog box to specify new investment income and expense categories that you can use to track various investment profits and losses.

Setting the Employee Stock Options

The Employee Stock Options buttons let you specify how Money should handle any employee stock options you are tracking. If you want to track the market value of all the shares you were granted, click the Market Value Of Total Shares Granted option button. If, on the other hand, you want to track only the market value
of the vested shares you hold, click the Market Value Of Vested Shares Only option button.

Setting the Capital Gain Options

At the bottom of the Investments tab, Money provides what is perhaps the most important bit of control over investment record keeping. The Capital Gains boxes let you specify how Money should determine whether capital gains or losses are long term. What you need to do is enter the time cutoff that determines when
a gain or loss is long term. For example, if a gain or loss becomes long term one year after the initial purchase of the investment, enter 1 in the text box and then select Years.