MS Money QFE UK version

[Richard Wood]

Can someone help please with a problem  MS money problem regarding merging investments.

 

I have a holding in a UK company X which is trying to obtain both a US and UK listing by reversing into an American company Y. Share trading in X ceased on 27^th February and reopened as Y on both markets on 3^rd March. I have tried to use the record a special activity menu to say that Y is buying X but neither company is recognised on the drop down menus although X is shown in my portfolio and Y is in the Dummy account. If I try to type in the respective names and press next, I get a flag saying this company already exists, please choose another name.

 

I am reluctant to sell X and buy Y as this would flag up as a capital gain in my annual tax report.

 

Regards

 

Richard

 

 

[Stephen Google]

I use that version of Money. I don't trust the Money CGT report for a UK tax return so just sell / buy the shares.

[Michael Wylde]

I can’t understand why “record a merger” won’t do it, but in any case I agree you can’t rely on CGT calculations in Money, the cost base goes wrong (for UK rules) if you have partial disposals.

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[Cal Learner]

Looking at  https://www.gov.uk/tax-sell-shares/same-company it looks like you usually use average basis when you sell part of your stock shares.

UK Money types: Bond, Cash Unit Trust, Index, Managed Fund, Other, Savings Bond and Stocks 

If it is your job to compute the average basis, or you just want to track this, I propose two ways to work around the problem.

1. Change all previous transactions to be from a new security called X_fund. I expect that Money has a way to use average basis for a managed fund. If you want a technique to do that, say so. 
2.  Do not do #1. Instead, when you sell, select to identify specific shares. Then tell Money  you are selling a proportional amount from each lot. That will give the same answer as an average basis calculation.

If you had a lot of buys/lots, then either would be tedious. #1 would make future sells easy.

[Stephen Google]

If you have bought funds / shares and are only selling from now on you just need work out the the average purchase price for CGT = total invested / total units/shares. That averaged price remains the same for CGT when you keep selling shares/units. I used Money to report my share/fund purchases, then exported that to Excel to work out the average cost and profit on disposal for CGT.

[Michael Wylde]

Yes I work it out in Excel too. You have to recalculate the pool if you subsequently buy any more of that share.

It gets very messy if you buy and sell within 30 days there are special rules.

Cal’s method no 2 is OK in principle but it can be difficult to proportion them accurately enough. If there happens to be a share split at some stage too it can get really fouled up and when you finally sell the last, you can find there is a tiny fractional residual holding so it keeps showing in the account.

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[Cal Learner]

To get rid of a small residual...

From the account register, click AccountSummary on the left and then AccountUpdate on the bottom.

Enter 0 in the TotalQuantity column for the problem security, and then click SaveAndFinish at the bottom.

[Michael Wylde]

Oh that could have saved me hours!

Does it lead to a financial correction too?

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From: microso...@googlegroups.com <microso...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cal Learner <msm.cal...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2026 5:40:07 pm

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[Cal Learner]

It generates a RemoveShares with the right size, even the amount that does not show on the screen due to rounding. RemoveShares does not affect the cash account.

[Dan Adkins]

Thanks for another tidbit, Cal.  I found a good reference page article to add that to...

https://microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com/how-to-display-closed-positions-transferred-investments-and-investments-with-negligible-worth-in-portfolio-manager/

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[Richard Wood]

 

 

Cal

 

I own one packet of the selling company X and a hleofx dummy amount of the buying company Y. After the deal I should have a 1 for 1 amount of shares in Y in my portfolio, no selling company X and an inflow of stock prices in my dummy account to update the portfolio. However the merger option does not work as neither the selling company stock description nor the buying company detail is listed in the two drop down menus.

 

Richard

 

From: Cal Learner <msm.cal...@gmail.com>
Sent: 13 March 2026 14:02
To: Richard Wood <r...@wood155.plus.com>
Subject: Re: MS Money QFE UK version

 

I guess I did not understand the situation. I had presumed that you owned just one of the types of shares to begin with. I had presumed you would own only one type after. I had presumed this was a non-taxable event. With those things true, renaming the investment, and changing the symbol if appropriate, would have done the job nicely.

 

If you owned both X and Y classes before, and if you will own one after,  then a merger seems appropriate.

 

If you owned one class before and will own two different types of shares after, then you will want a demerger (spinoff).  If you had shares of X before, and you will also have an equal number of Y (twice as many shares between the two holdings) in the demerger you would say you are getting 1 share of Y for each share of X. You would say that the new shares will carry 50% of the basis. You could pre-define Y, or , more commonly, create it during the demerger entry. To pre-define, in Sunset,  Portfolio->WorkWithInvestments->SetUpANewInvestment would work. I expect it similar in UK Money. To define during the demerger, type the name of Y into the blank box. You will be able to enter the new symbol after you click Next.

 

Symbol changes are entered in the investment details. As to HLE quotes, companies change symbols at times. I expect there is a straight-forward way. You may not have to actively do anything but make the new symbol(s) correct.

 

On Fri, Mar 13, 2026 at 4:25 AM Richard Wood <r...@wood155.plus.com> wrote:

Dear Cal

 

Thank you for your reply. The ratio is 1 to 1 so that is easy

 

When I change the names of the both X and Y shares, how do I get back to the proper name  for Y with its ticker code so that hleOfx quotes will update the price.  Also, how am I able to retain the original average purchase price for X to calculate capital gains if I later sell Y.

 

If I change X to X2 and Y to Y2 and do not assign tickers, the merger part works. However, Y2 cannot be changed back to Y with Y’s ticker. I receive the same message, that name is already being used for an existing stock, please choose another. I get a similar response with the ticker.

 

Am I being stupid?

 

Richard

 

From: Cal Learner <msm.cal...@gmail.com>
Sent: 12 March 2026 23:01
To: Richard Wood <r...@wood155.plus.com>
Subject: Re: MS Money QFE UK version

 

I would rename the shares, and do an appropriate split. If you identify the ratio, I could provide a pair of integers needed to get that ratio in a split.

 

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[Cal Learner]

Richard, I may not understand  the " hleofx dummy". I wonder if you are saying that you created a Watch account (or whatever it is called in UK Money)? In that Watch account, you did a Buy of Y.

So one way or another, X and Y are already defined (though Y is only in the watch account). Are you content to keep the price history of Y attached to Y? If not, say so. There will be an easy-enough alternative. In the remainder of this post, I presume that keeping the quote/price history of Y is OK with you.

Are you saying that you think that you should be able to do a merger of X and Y into Y, and then  you would own some Y in the dummy/watch account and some real shares in the real account? That sounds right.  Are then saying that you tried entering a merger of Y with X, but X was not a choice?

As I see it, you would go to the portfolio. In US Money, it would be  ChangePortfolioView->ShowWatchAccounts 

Right-click Y, and choose Details

Or get to the Details for Y in some other way.

In the left column, RecordAMerger, and proceed.

If that does not describe your situation, please state your situation simply.

[Cal Learner]

The hleOfx dummy account is the way that price updater works. The dummy is a real investment account. hleOfx records a buy of .001 shares for each investment in the downloader. As the dummy account then has an up to date price, all investments in my portfolio become updated. The cash element of these dummy buys are not tracked and the dummy account is not shown in my portfolio.
 
So, I have a long term investment in X, shown in my portfolio. I did not own Y but, in anticipation of the merger, I added Y to the downloader and downloaded prices for a few days. Thus Money thinks I own a miniscule amount of Y that is not in my portfolio.
 
Neither X nor Y is listed in the drop down menus for the selling company nor the buying company in the Record a Merger command.
 
I believe this may be because the file used for the drop down menus is full of ancient investments and is no longer able to include recent transactions. If I scowl down the list there are many closed investments from before 2010 shown and few active ones made after 2020. The merger command will not accept entries for investments not in the menu if they are not for a truly new investment

For a merger, the drop-down list is alphabetical. I think you are saying that neither X nor Y are in the drop-down lists.

I wonder if you have not run across some kind of limit I am not aware of as to how many things are in the list. That  limit would have to be pretty big.

Try changing the name of X to aaX and Y to aaY. That would make them appear first in the lists. While at it, you could change some names to start with zzz.

Another thing that comes to mind is that X and Y may not both be type stock. Check Type in Details.

So here is an alternate without using a merger:
1 Rename Y to Old_Y. Blank the symbol. The price history will still be recorded but not connected to your actual holding.

2. Rename X to Y, and change the symbol to the surviving symbol.

I am not sure how hleOfxQuotes will play into this. If there is a problem, maybe post the question for HLE. It may be that hleofxquotes is remembering the <UNIQUEID> ( SEDOL/CUSIP/ISIN ). and will continue to associate that with Old_Y.  There is a probable way to cause Money to forget that association. But maybe the problem will not come up.