Investment accounts are designed to reflect your real-life brokerage accounts and are the place where you enter information about the securities you own. To get started with investment tracking in iBank, begin here - in order to enter your securities, you must first create an investment account. Even if you do not maintain a brokerage account in real life, you must create a "virtual" brokerage account in iBank to enter the securities.
Create an account like you would any other, but be sure to choose "Investment" from the pop-up menu in the "Create New Account" sheet. You probably will want to name the account after your brokerage firm, e.g. "Morgan Stanley" or "Scottrade". After clicking "Create Account" you will see the account appear in the source list:
Just like with other iBank accounts, selecting the account in the source list will display the transaction view to the right, where you can enter transactions pertaining to that account. Each purchase, sale, cash transfer, dividend received, etc. must be entered as a separate transaction in the investment account. See Investment Transactions for more information about tracking your investment activity.
When dealing with investment accounts, there are three balances you need to be aware of:
This value reflects the amount of cash in your brokerage account only. In most cases, cash is not actually held in your brokerage account for long - when you purchase shares of a stock, you transfer the money to your broker and then it is immediately spent to purchase the securities. When you receive money from the sale of a stock, the money is immediately transferred into a savings or other account. In iBank, you must remember to track each of these transactions, entering transfers where appropriate, so that the cash balance of your investment account remains accurate. The cash value of your investment account is displayed as the balance in the transaction view:
This value reflects the approximate worth of your portfolio, based on quotes for all the securities you are currently holding. The market value of your investment account is displayed in the summary table of the Portfolio:
This value represents the combined worth of the cash value of the brokerage account and the market value of your investment portfolio. It is a straight sum of these two figures. The total value of your investment account is displayed next to the account name in the source list:
Select the account in the source list and choose View>Show Account Info. The account info pane will appear, where you can edit details for that account just like any other.
The minimum balance for an investment account applies only to the cash value of the account. Even if the total value of the account remains above the minimum balance you specified, if the cash value drops below it you will see a warning badge displayed on the account's icon in the source list.
Select the account in the source list and press the 'Delete' key on your keyboard, or choose Edit>Delete. A sheet will appear asking you to confirm that you want to permanently delete the account. All transactions contained within the account will also be deleted. Any transfers in the account will be deleted, but the transactions in other accounts to which those transfers are connected will not be deleted (they simply will no longer show the account in their category fields).