Upgraded Folios - a round of updates to make tracking your investments easier

11th Sep '19 by Jack Brumby

36 comments 6130 reads

Today we’re excited to roll out another round of updates to the new version of the Stockopedia site.

Most of the additions made over the past fortnight are to do with beefing up the Folios - our portfolio & watchlist system - which is packed full of neat features designed to take more of the administrative burden off your hands. What you have now is faster, clearer, and easier to use.

Here’s what’s new:

It’s easier than ever to enter Folio transactions

Portfolios can have hundreds or even thousands of transactions, so we’ve made it easier than ever to add these transactions into your Folio. Now:

Entering the number of shares and the total automatically calculates the price per share.
Entering the total dividend and the number of shares brings up the dividend per share.

What’s more, relevant transaction inputs now update automatically when you adjust the “total” field or other fields. If you use our portfolio software, these additions should save you quite a lot of time in the years ahead.

See your cash flows over time with the cumulative cash flow column

One function that should help you keep on top of your cash position is the cumulative cash flow column in the Transactions tab.

This handy column gives you a better impression of your cash flows over time. These cash flow figures remain constant as of point in time when sorting transactions (e.g. by date) or when filtering transactions.

Improved speed on desktop and laptop

We have tinkered with the Folios layout to reduce the amount of scrolling and speed up the experience for users on laptop and desktop.

The amount of empty space has been reduced, the valuation chart has been made smaller, and we have cut out a lot of white space on the gains table and the cash vs. equity breakdown.

Other improvements and bug fixes

Here are some additional improvements we have made to the site:

You can now see a stock’s full index membership in the Profile Summary of StockReport.

We’ve been out squashing bugs, as well. Here are a few of the notables:

Folios - we fixed an issue where the Style Analysis section struggled to load for larger portfolios.
Switching between the old and new site - a small minority of users reported not being able to switch between versions of the site. This has been resolved.

What’s next?

In the next development cycle, we’re making additional improvements to Folios. You can keep on top of all the work we are doing by heading over to the “What’s New” section of the Learn area on the new site. Here you will find the rest of our product updates to the community.

As for what’s coming up in the months ahead, click through to the near term Product Roadmap to have a look. You should explore this roadmap in more detail - you can vote for potential upgrades in the “in the backlog” and “in consideration” tabs. We will prioritise the cards with the most votes so make sure to have your say.

There are loads of improvements in the pipeline and soon we will be taking our data sets and suite of features further than they have ever been before. It’s our main focus now and all of these long-awaited additions will be going onto the new site.

If you haven’t taken a look yet, why not switch over now to familiarise yourself.

MartinJackson

12th Sep '19

The copy screen new names do not display without F5 refresh and the display is too narrow to display the full names. The display width isn't adjustable.

Jack Brumby

13th Sep '19

Hi Marowa, Funds/trusts are our most requested data addition, so they will happen - but they're not in the near-term pipeline. We've got a lot of updates we should be able to get through at a decent clip now and that's where we are currently focusing our efforts.

We'll keep everyone updated re. what's happening with these posts and via the 'Product Roadmap' area of the Learn section on the new site, so make sure to keep checking back.

Lion Tamer

Hello Jack

Great work on the updates to the new site. For example, the ability to enter dividends on the new site by total rather than per share had previously been one of my deal breakers, so many thanks :-)

A few comments on the new site... (I realise it is work-in-progress, so apologies if you already have these points in your sights)

1) Will you be reinstating the missing functions from the old portfolio "analysis" tab to the new site? Whilst the valuation charts have moved to the main portfolio screen, the other very useful sections seem to have been lost. Information such as the aggregate health and the ratios.

2) The removal of white space on the mobile site has helped, but I notice there is still a grey boarder to each side. Without this I would probably be able to see another column in my portfolio.

3) Also on the mobile site, I still can't pinch & zoom (using Android with either Lightening or Firefox).

3b) Also for some reason Android/Lightening does not change to desktop mode when I set the user agent to desktop mode. This is a shame as pinch & zoom works in desktop mode, which I can get with Android/Firefox. However with Android/Lightening, (and my desktop PC, Linux/Firefox) I can edit the URL from "www" to "app" allowing me to chose which pages to see on the old or new sites. However Android/Firefox does not play nicely if you edit the URLs in this way, with login boxes and redirections etc. Therefore Android/Firefox is not a work-round for me, so I guess I need to stay mainly with the old site a bit longer.

John King

It is of limited value for me because I only invest GBPs in Global non-UK ETFs and Euros in Germans Equities.

Hi Lion Tamer,

Thanks for the feedback, glad to hear the Total transactions are useful!

Re. your first point, Portfolio Analysis is very much on the agenda and we have a lot of exciting new things planned here. This kind of insight will be a core part of the value we provide for retail investors. Of course, we are also working hard to get the new site to feature parity as well.

I have fed your other points back to the Design team.

Best,

Jack

Lizzy222

14th Sep '19

We need directors dealings included in the charts with amount purchased and volume just by clicking the stock chart like Hargreaves and Lansdown have on there platform

schomosport

Cumulative cash flow is of little interest to me and when I filter transactions by an individual equity then the cumulative cash flow per transaction are just quantities at whatever the date the transaction was in time and offers no useful information.
I still await the return of the cumulative sum of transactions by equity as still exists within the old screen. For example I have 20 transactions related to IMB since 2013 and when I go to the transactions screen what I need to know is what my cumulative cost is in time which I can then quickly compare with the current value of the holding to determine profit or loss. Was/is my investment in this share a success or a failure? I cannot believe that there are not more people complaining about this absence. Maybe I am missing an alternative way of doing this. OK it is easy enough to C&P to Excel but it takes more time.
Sorry, came and viewed the recently heralded improvements and got fed up after 10 minutes and went back to the old screen. I shall be truly sorry when it goes.

Laughton

15th Sep '19

Afraid I agree with you schomosport. Surely the whole point of a new site is to make operations quicker and simpler - not suddenly having to use additional clicks, time downloading to Excel to manipulate data to a format that it was available on the original site.

I don't access the site via a mobile or tablet and from previous comments I gather that the new site is a much better view when done so. Maybe that's the way things are bound to go in the modern age.

The view of the new site isn't nearly as good on the fairly large screen of my desktop.

Obviously the "old" site will go eventually and, when it does, on current experience I shall be following.

Daniel Rudd

marowa

Thanks Jack for getting back to me quickly. Would there also be the possibility in the future to add other types of financial instruments to the portfolios too e.g gilts and corporate bonds for example? So you could assess a complete diversified portfolio contaning all investments?

J Sala

16th Sep '19

agree with some of my peers critiquing the new site ... while I understand it takes time to adapt to it, I see the new layout over-indexing on the visuals and cosmetics items.

I would expect net new functionality features (ie. having ETFs/IT/funds reports, backtesting, 10y reports) and not seeing removed existent ones (ie valuation tools such us EPV, DFC, etc).

I want to be a wiser investor consuming your insights, the cosmetics changes are just table stakes!

18th Sep '19

Hi Lizzy, we have 'directors dealings' marked as In Development in our Product Roadmap area. Take a look around to see if there's anything else you would like to vote on.

Hi J,

The plan is to have the new site open so subscribers can try it out while we continue to bring it up to speed. That's why we are keeping the old site running in tandem.

Pretty soon the new site will be at feature parity and we will be moving on to the new features you have mentioned - you can see more in terms of what's coming up in the Product Roadmap. You'll see things like the DCF calculator are included there.

Rest assured, the new site is not about cosmetics - there is a whole lot more going on underneath the surface in terms of processing power, data robustness, etc.!

doug2500

I don't want to be negative but I keep trying the new site and keep reverting back to the old.

While I love the new graph showing stockrank over time, I hate the discussion section. I find the screen cluttered, the font unhelpful and the whole thing just too hard to read. The comments always seem in a random order, I hate the way replies are listed. I go back to the old site and it's aaaah that's better, so much cleaner and easier to read.

I don't find the font on the stockrank page as clear as the old site either but I can cope with that.

The features may be an improvement, using it on a tablet may be an improvement but in some respects it's a step back on a desktop.

I don't use the word hate lightly and apologise but hopefully this can be taken as constructive criticism.

19th Sep '19

Don't worry Doug, we are definitely taking feedback constructively! Getting your input is important.

We are actually just about to start a new sprint centred around Discussion area improvements, so watch this space - we'll be updating in a couple of weeks.

kitpotter

25th Sep '19

How do I start my new trial?

wildshot

26th Sep '19

How are you getting on carrying the Events calendar from the old site into the new site for Folios?

tagware

1st Oct '19

Could be the PC/Mobile settings are not correct. If you are scratching your head on this one.

Wrong Keyboard or Country. Sorry. The USA against the UK. As we were here first it should follow our rules. :o)

Graham Hacker

6th Nov '19

Bug? From the folios screen select transactions. I tried to edit “deposit” transactions, it either returned the “Add” (a transaction) screen or the last transaction entered. I could not edit any of my deposit transactions.

FYI - I’m using the deposit transaction to reflect balances from other investments - 5 in all. This gives me a total of all my investments. Of course there might be a better way of achieving the same end