How do I use Capital Gains charts?

The Capital Gains chart type is used to analyze profit and loss from the sale of securities in one of your portfolios across a specified range of dates. Once you have configured the chart, you can generate a standard Capital Gains report based on the information contained in it.

To get started with a Capital Gains chart:

Create a new chart and choose the "Capital Gains" option. Immediately to the right of the source list you will see a few properties which are used to configure the chart:

chart options

Any changes made to the chart settings will update the chart automatically. Because charts are generated on-the-fly, you don't need to wait to see your changes take effect.

To configure the chart options:

Set the following options to determine which transactions are used and how the chart will be displayed.

To view the chart results:

capital gains chartOnce you have your chart settings configured the way you want them, you will see a pie graph to the right, with tabs to select whether to view your gains or losses (click get quotes Get Quotes on the toolbar to make sure these figures are up-to-date). Click "Gains" to view a breakdown of all securities from which you have turned a profit. Click "Losses" to view a breakdown of all securities from which you have suffered a loss.

Each pie slice represents the total amount of money gained or loss from sales of a particular security. The slices are drawn proportionally so that you can quickly get a sense of how your securities compare. A security symbol is displayed with each slice; click any slice to view the total gain/loss for that security and its percentage relative to the other securities shown on the graph. Press one of the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the selection to another pie slice.

short and long term gainsDouble-click a pie slice to "dig down" and break the slice into its component parts. Each gain or loss is considered to have two components: short-term (for sales made less than a year after purchase) and long-term (for sales made a year or more after purchase). If you hold the Command key on your keyboard while double-clicking a pie slice, the breakdown of short- and long-term components for the slice you clicked will appear in their own pie graph.

Double-clicking on one of these components will dig down further and reveal a table of gains and losses from individual sales of the selected security. To "climb back up" towards the original pie graph, click the go back button at the top-left of the chart view.

Above the pie chart is a figure representing the total amount of your gains or losses, depending on which tab you currently have selected.

To generate a standard Capital Gains report:

Capital Gains reports provide a tabular breakdown of your gains and losses from the sale of securities over a specified range of dates. Only sales included in the portfolio you specified in the chart setup will be counted.

Make sure you have a Capital Gains chart selected in the source list, then click the generate report button at the bottom of the main window. iBank will generate a PDF document of the report and open it using the preview Preview application (or your default PDF viewer). From there, you can print the report or save it for your records; iBank does not save your reports internally.

capital gains report

If you check "Add Report to Quick Look" before generating the report, an image of the Capital Gains report will be stored inside your data file. If you highlight your iBank data file in the Finder and press the spacebar to invoke Quick Look, you will see all of your saved reports in a slideshow format.

Interpreting Captial Gains reports

Across the top of each page of the report, you will see the date the chart was generated, the title of the report ("Capital Gains Report"), the name of the iBank chart from which the report was generated, the page number, and the name of the application that created the report ("iBank").

Each row in the table shows a single sale transaction. The column on the left lists the names of your securities, separated into two sections: short-term and long-term. The next column shows the total number of shares sold for each security; after that is a column showing the date of the sale. Next is the price of the sale, followed by the original cost of those shares. The column on the right shows the difference between the sale price and cost basis, resulting in the gain or loss for that sale.

Below each section of the report is a row subtotaling the sale prices, cost basis, and gain/loss for your short- and long-term sales. The last line of the report provides overall totals. The figure at the bottom-right of the report is your final Capital Gain (or Capital Loss, as the case may be).

If you are using multiple currencies, the Capital Gains report will sum the transactions as if they were using the same currency, which may lead to inaccurate totals. iBank cannot automatically convert transactions between currencies for use in this chart. To avoid this, use a smart portfolio to define a subset of your investment transactions that only uses one currency.