I’ve been investing in the stock market since many years now. In the early days, with paper share certificates and contract notes, I kept a written record or used Excel or Open Office Calc. Over time, manual data entry and record keeping became cumbersome. That’s when I began looking for a Portfolio Management Software.
Managing the portfolio
I’ve been using Microsoft Money to do this, along with the ET Portfolio Tracker for stocks and Value Research for mutual funds. There are portfolio tools with demat and online trading providers too. I use Sharekhan, HDFC Securities and ICICIDirect, and their portfolio trackers are quite basic. Besides, they will obviously track only those investments done through them.
MS Money is perfect in many ways for me; lets me track my investments, bank accounts, loans, pending bills, credit cards – all in one place, and I’ve been using it since the late ’90s. However, the biggest problem was lack of compatibility with Indian stocks/Capital Gains system, and so on. Microsoft has discontinued this product, though a “Sunset” version is still available for download. It is still very useful.
The ET Portfolio Tracker is quite comprehensive and is easily among the best ones I’ve seen so far (and free). The only minor issue is it is web based, not that there’s any bank or other critical information stored (like Intuit Money Manager ). Portfolio management on Value Research is superb for mutual funds, but not all that great for stocks.
A year ago, I’d tried MProfit Portfolio Management Software – then available on a trial basis. I liked it, but wasn’t keen to pay for something MS Money and ET Tracker did for free. Some months ago, MProfit was available for free (for investments up to Rs. 50 lakh) and I downloaded it again.
Adding data in MProfit
It is desktop based and all data is stored locally. Prices are updated every 15 minutes. There isn’t much to configure. The opening screen has a list of investment types on the left. It is fairly straightforward and you can input all details as per the contract note, including STT, taxes, brokerage, fees etc.
However, the real powerhouse is the import function, which lets you add a template for Broker Contract Note, Mutual Funds, Insurance and F&O, taking the hassle out of manual input. It includes almost every known intermediary in the market today so you shouldn’t have a problem importing your data irrespective of who you’ve invested with, including PDFs from eCAS (for mutual funds).
Once the template is created, the scrip/MF names in the contract note need to be mapped to the names in MProfit the first time and voila, all your data is in. I was wary of doing it correctly for some older transactions, but it checks for duplicates. No worries about entering same data twice. The only problem I faced was in importing slightly older records, as contract note templates have changed over the years.
Adding corporate actions is a pain
Adding corporate actions like merger/demerger, split, bonus, dividend payout/reinvestment is done manually. This is a big pain point while using MProfit. ET tracker and Value Research apply these actions automatically.
Mprofit reports
The report generation feature in MProfit is quite good and comprehensive. There are six major types of reports, each having a further 10-15 sub-reports. The report formats are nice and neat. It was fun playing around with the data to generate different reports, particularly for Capital Gains.
Final Thoughts
MProfit is an excellent portfolio management software. While this is a free version, they have paid plans for HNIs and Family Offices, and Wealth Professionals. Their pricing plans are available here.
You can sign up for the free version and then decide whether to continue or upgrade to the paid version. Do note that the free version will work only for investments up to Rs. 50 lakh.
** As of June 2023, I’ve stopped using MProfit, as there were too many issues. No syncing, display of correct name/s of scrips, MProfit install exe file flagged as malware at times, and then their customer support folks, who said,
“Our team is genuinely trying to provide assistance here even if you are a free MProfit user and we would like you to continue using free version”
I told them if assistance/support is not part of the free plan, they should stop forcing users to update to a paid plan, so we won’t need to email them at all.
Other online portfolio trackers have improved considerably since then, so I’m using them + the trusty old MS Money.
