CNET Editors' review
Personal finance and investment management software is becoming more powerful and capable yet easier to use than ever. Case in point is Believ's flagship product, Fund Manager Personal, a comprehensive portfolio manager designed to give investors powerful reporting and graphing features that are also easy to learn, understand, and apply. Its customizable financial analysis and reporting tools make it suitable for individual investors and family finances as well as active traders and market professionals.
Fund Manager's clean, elegant, businesslike interface is anchored by a full-featured menu bar, including an excellent Help file as well as controls for the program's 34 graph types and 17 reporting options. These are equally attractive and efficient, the colorful, customizable graph dialogs in particular. The reporting options let you filter, sort, list, and calculate data in different combinations and parameters to display exactly the results you need without irrelevant factors. We especially like the way Fund Manager grabs updated price and transaction data online at the click of a button, a huge time-saver. Another welcome feature is its ability to simplify tax preparation by quickly generating highly specific reports and automatically inserting tax IDs.
Fund Manager's free trial version is limited to 60 uses; the full version costs $69.. It works in Windows versions from 98 to 7. We were impressed by its ability to generate a staggering array of customized, specific, highly legible reports and graphs for a wide range of investors with very different financial needs. It's a significant presence in both business and personal finance software.
Publisher's Description
From Beiley Software:
Fund Manager Personal is a featured portfolio management application. Designed to help investors monitor and analyze their stocks, mutual funds, and other investments with a wide variety of easy to use graphs and reports. It helps you in keeping track of your investments easy by offering convenient features such as powerful price and transaction importing features as well as single push button price and transaction updates from the Internet. Fund Manager Personal makes tax time a breeze, and offers many graphing and reporting options that allow investors to conveniently get an insight into how well their investments are performing.
What's new in this version: Version 11.8 adds support for importing interest payments on new "Bank Deposit" cash from Scottrade institutional transaction files.
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All versions:
4.4 starsout of 17 votes
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Current version:
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"Difficult to import data"
Version: Fund Manager Personal 11.4
Pros
Looks like a nice interface, never really got my data in so I could try it
Cons
Automatic download from online accounts will not pick up historical transactions for securities not currently owned, at least not in the case of my mutual fund company (TRP). This data is available online from the website and can be downloaded in an Excel file, so the problem seems to be with the program and not with the website.
I tried to import these using the "import" function from an Excel spreadsheet, but this operation is very buggy. Never succeeded in getting more than 10% of the historical transactions in my spreadsheet imported in spite of spending several hours in the attempt.Summary
Great potential, but seems to me to be essentially a beta test version.
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"Good product, long trail period and great tech support"
Version: Fund Manager Personal 11.4
Pros
You can start the product 60 times before you need the product key. This was plenty of time to figure out how to use it and get into a routine for using it til you almost forget you are using it in demo mode.
The technical support is great. They were able to help me with the transition from my old DOS portfolio management program, PFROI, and it does everything that my old program did but it is easier.
It downloads transactions from my broker saving me the time and trouble of entering them manually.Cons
It can be kind of tricky importing all your old transaction data but it is easy to get help from their message board.
Summary
A good program for keeping track of cost bases and return on your investments.
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"Intuitive program for recording investment transactions"
Version: Fund Manager Personal 10.8
Pros
Beiley Software has been very solid over the years. Automated download of stock prices. Easy to setup and maintain real or play investment accounts. Very important in giving me picture of my financial health.
Cons
I keep forgetting where the tailored reports are stored (Registry?) so when I have to reload Windows every couple of years I have to search around too much to find them.
Summary
Beiley has been delivering a superb product for a long time. I've been using Fund Manager for over 9 years to record and display my investments. I can bring them up to date quickly using the online access to stock price data.
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"Just what a non professional like me needs. great tool."
Version: Fund Manager Personal 10.7
Pros
extremely flexible. fast response. now very user friendly
Cons
There is a learning curve as with every new piece of software. However, with care you can feel comfortable with it very soon. I did at 77, so can you.
Summary
I started with this program 10 years ago when I was 77. I was able shortly to use it to my advantage. i continue to find it indispensable to manage our portfolio in difficult times. Technical help is always there, and often personally from the developer. It's like family.
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"All I have ever needed"
Version: Fund Manager Personal 10.4
Pros
Affordable
Consistently maintained by the developer for the dozen years that I have owned and used it
Simple interface, but not dumbed-down
Most importantly, consistent and reliableCons
Never had a problem in twelve years
Summary
I have used Beiley's Fund Manager software for more than 12 years now, and never a problem. With that much data history, it would be unthinkable to use a program that gave me trouble. I have never spent a minute in those twelve years sweating with or even fussing with a problem. It keeps my records, safely and sensibly. What more could you ask?
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"Flexible, technically & financially rich, great support"
Version: Fund Manager Personal 10.2
Pros
Flexible reportiing and investment portfolio structures
Correct industry supported ROI calculations
Download detailed transactions from broker
Reconciliation function
Different tax treatment for each investment
Outstanding timely support from staff.Cons
Cash accounts do not download correctly.
So much flexibility means it is complexSummary
I expected to pay MUCH more to get the functionality FM offers. You can set up various views of your investments. For example one to match you investment accounts at brokers, another to track investments from various accounts by asset allocation and another to track a theoretical portfolio. It offers and extremely rich data base and calculations to for user designed reports. It handles virtually all stock, mutual fund and bond transactions. FM includes foreign currency investments. The owner/developer is always available to respond to questions and is very open to suggestions for improvements. It is rare to find quality and service of this level for this price.
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"Top for tracking investments in different currencies"
Version: Fund Manager Personal 9
Pros
Versatile, dowloads proce quotes from different sources, incl. international
Cons
Can not find problems
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"Cool, but why pay"
Version: Fund Manager Personal 8.10
Pros
decent features
Cons
Confusing to use, also, why pay for this when you can do it online at fundmojo.com or Morningstar.com
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"Excelent product"
Version: Fund Manager Personal 8.7
Pros
I have used different versions of Fund Manager Personal over the years and I find it very easy to use and a great way to track your stocks, mutual funds etc.
I have had the odd issue that I didn't understand and the support team has been excellent.
I highly recommend Fund Manager if you are looking for a program to track you portfolio.
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"You can't invest profitably without Fund Mgr."
Version: Fund Manager Personal 8.2
Pros
The charts, the reports and the detail are all beyond anything else out there.
Cons
A little complicated to understand sometimes.
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