Not sure how to choose an investment management software?
Investment management software should be able to handle a multitude of investments, including stocks, mutual funds, and more.
We break down all the things you should look for when picking an investment management software that’s right for you.
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Manage your Portfolio with SYNDi
SYNDi Investment Ledger facilitates the administration of your investment portfolio consisting of stocks, bonds and short-term notes, and generates timely reports to provide real-time information.
What is 
Investment Ledger?
SYNDi Investment Ledger manages the purchase and sale of stocks, bonds, short-term notes, fixed deposits and other financial instruments in an investment portfolio.
How can Investment Ledger help ?
In situations where you maintain investment history in General Ledger a G/L account is set up typically for each security and is often extended to the partner level through sub-accounts for tracking purposes. The result is the chart of accounts soars to an unmanageable level. SYNDi Investment Ledger solves the problem by maintaining individual transactions while passing a simple journal entry to General Ledger. With SYNDi Investment Ledger you may set up just one or two asset accounts for investments and maintain all history within the sub-ledger, thus keeping your General Ledger clean and streamlined. SYNDi Investment Ledger can be used to maintain the history of all transactions related to the purchase and sale of stocks, bonds and short-term notes. The application can also be used to manage portfolios of multiple partners or investors in a financial organization maintaining clients’ investments.
Investment Ledger facilitates the administration of:
◉ Stocks
◉ Money Market Fund
◉ Short-Term Notes
◉ Fixed Rate Bonds
◎ Simple Bonds
◎ Commercial Papers
◎ Treasury Bills
◎ Sinking Funds
◉ Floating Rate Notes
◎ Vanilla Bonds
◎ Floored Bonds
◎ Capped Bonds
◎ Collared Bonds
Product Features
Multi-currency Support
SYNDi Investment Ledger can maintain transactions in the currency of the general ledger (functional currency) as well as in source currency. It maintains exchange rates to convert source currency into functional currency.
Stocks
You can enter purchase and sale of stock, enter dividend, perform share split and adjustments.
Notes
Short-term instruments such as certificates of deposit (CD) and other notes can be processed by entering deposits, withdrawals and interest receipts.
User-friendly Interface
The screen design of SYNDi Investment Ledger has been kept as simple and as uncluttered as possible. The data-entry is facilitated by drop-down lists and calendar controls.
Sage 300 ERP Integration
SYNDi Investment Ledger can be integrated with the General Ledger in Sage 300 ERP (Accpac). When integrated, it uses and updates the chart of accounts, currencies, banks and exchange rates from Sage 300 seamlessly.
Diversification
An investment management software should be able to handle a multitude of investments, including stocks, mutual funds, money market funds, all types of bonds, treasury bills, fixed deposits etc.
Customer Portfolio Management
If you provide financial services to customers, you will have to manage a ledger for each customer, containing the history of trade activity and providing timely information for customers.
Report Generation
Apart from built-in reports, you should be able to design custom reports with ease using the report generation tool of your choice. You should also be able to integrate it with Microsoft Office so that you can generate reports in Excel or Word.
Multiple Companies
There is no limit on the number of company databases or partners.
Bonds
SYNDi Investment Ledger can process the purchase of bonds, perform monthly interest accruals, process coupon receipts, maturity and sale of bonds.
Real-time Reporting
SYNDi Investment Ledger monitors your books in real-time through on-line inquiries and timely reports.
Microsoft Office Integration
SYNDi Investment Ledger uses Microsoft Access database from which you can export information to any module of Microsoft Office.
Scalability
You may find several packages available in the market, but how do you decide which one to choose? One of the factors to consider is to establish how scalable the software is. It may be adequate for your current needs, but will it continue serving as your portfolio grows and gets diversified? Investing in software that is not scalable may be sufficient for the time being, but may prove to be a challenge as you’re your requirements change.
Transaction Management
(a) The software should be capable of handling all types of transactions for every security, including brokers’ fees and taxes. In the case of interest-bearing instruments, it should generate interest accruals monthly.
(b) The system should be able to handle multiple currencies and store exchange rates for all currencies.
(c) The software should generate accounting entries that can be imported into whatever accounting system you are using.
(d) If you use brokers and money managers, you should be able to import their statements to incorporate their activity into the database.
Additional Features
(a) It is essential that the system does not allow a user to make mistakes and validates each field before writing a record into the database. It minimizes data-entry errors and ensures data integrity.
(b) The system should enable the administrator to set up user rights so that a user is restricted to performing only those functions for which he or she is authorized.
(c) The system must maintain a complete audit trail of who does what and when. The chronology of every event should be saved so that you can go back and trace the source and date/time of erroneous entries.
(d) The user must not be able to delete a transaction once it has been posted. However, authorized users should be permitted to reverse transactions and repost them. Again, the audit trail must maintain the history of such corrections.
Picking a Software Provider
One of the critical factors in choosing a software package is the flexibility of the software provider to accommodate as many of your needs as possible. No software can fulfil 100% of your requirements. The software provider plays a vital role in your decision making. Some vendors are open to customizing the solution to fit your needs while others offer you the product as is. So, if you have any special requirements or business rules, find out from the vendor as to what extent such needs can be accommodated.
In the final analysis, remember that you are not looking for a product. Instead, you are looking for a solution. The software vendor should commit to providing a complete solution, including discovery sessions to determine your requirement to the last detail, training the users, and providing assistance in the implementation and testing of the system.
Still undecided? Check out our free PDF on picking the right software provider here.