Stocks

General Stocks

Omni holds details of general investments i.e. where there will be a common unit price for every scheme holding such a stock. These investments include managed funds, equities, gilts and unit trusts. The stock itself needs to be introduced to the system (under Investments, Stocks) and then transactions for individual schemes can be entered using ‘Investments, Investment Transactions’ to create ‘holdings’.

Segregated Portfolios

Omni uses the term ‘Segregated Portfolios’ to refer to groups of investments where the intention is to store just the total value of all investments in the portfolio. For instance, a scheme may have a discretionary portfolio managed by a stockbroker where many shares are held and there may be a high turnover of stocks. Rather than track every transaction the total value could be stored each month or quarter, in a similar way to a managed fund. For the time being, with profits policies and shares in associated company shares are set up under Segregated Portfolios.

If transactions are stored for segregated portfolios, they should represent the amounts added to the portfolio or withdrawn from the portfolio and not the transactions in the underlying stocks within the portfolio.

Scheme Specific Stocks

Investments that relate to specific schemes (loans, property, segregated portfolios etc) are entered as stocks but the scheme that will hold that asset is selected on the set up screen. There is no need to enter any transactions for these investments.

Borrowing

Amounts that a scheme has borrowed from a bank are entered directly under ‘Investments, SSAS Investments, Borrowing’ – the borrowing is not set up on a global basis.

Holdings

The Holdings button produces a spreadsheet showing all of the schemes that have units in the selected stock.

Transactions

The Transactions button is visible when General Stocks are selected. It provides a spreadsheet showing all purchases and sales of units in the selected fund, across all schemes.

Commission

Commission received for any product/stock can be entered and analysed. The Commission button will be visible if the master user has set the appropriate setting.

Archive

An Archive button will be visible is the master user has enabled the setting and any option other than ‘All Stocks’ is selected. On selecting a stock and then clicking this button, Omni will try to archive the selected stock as follows:

· for a segregated portfolio. If the status of the scheme holding the portfolio is ‘Wound up’, ‘Gone Away’ or ‘Aborted’, or no scheme has been selected, then the stock is archived. Similarly, if the latest price (value) of the portfolio is zero then the stock is archived. Otherwise, Omni will refuse to archive the stock.

· For other products. If no scheme has a holding remaining in the stock, then the stock is archived,

· If the stock is already archived, a message will appear asking if you want to un-archive the stock.

The Search button shows a screen where you can enter the name of a manager or a fund and the grid will show all stocks that include that text in the selected field. You can also search text or numbers that you may have entered in the Extra Details field.

Property addresses are included in the Manager/address search.

The text to search for can be partial, for example searching on ‘Upper’ in the Manager/address field will produce addresses such as 54 Upper Bristol Road Bath and also 23 Upper Carlisle Road, Kendal.

The text is not case-sensitive.

Source of Prices or Values

On the ‘Investments, Stocks, Amend’ window there is a field ‘Price Source’. This enables the way in which prices are entered to be split into categories that can then be accessed under ‘Investments, Prices’. In general, ‘FT’ prices will all be entered on a block basis from sources such as the FT with the same date for a number of stocks. For ‘Ad-hoc’ or ‘Postal’ each stock is displayed separately and the date is entered as well as the price.

Updated values for properties, loans and other scheme specific investments are stored under ‘Investment, Prices, Scheme Specific’. All such investments for the specified scheme are displayed on that screen.

The ‘Investments, Prices, Other Prices’ screen shows the price history for stocks with Ad-hoc Prices, All General Stocks or All Stocks. Values can be entered or amended. There is a facility to send ‘1 Stock to Excel’ which includes all prices stored for that stock at all dates. In addition ‘All Stocks to Excel’ includes the latest price/value for every stock.

The ‘Investments, Prices, Segregated Portfolios’ screen shows all segregated portfolios and the values at a date selected by the user. Values can be entered or amended. There is a facility to send the data on the screen to Excel so that it easy to see which stocks have values at a given date and which don’t.

UCIS and Non Standard Assets

On the ‘Investments, Stocks, Amend’ window for General Stocks and Segregated Portfolios, there is a ‘UCIS?’ box. This can be ticked to show that the fund is an Unregulated Collective Investment Scheme, as defined by the FSA. XLreports can produce a list of all UCIS funds. Similarly, there is a ‘Non Standard Asset?’ box which can be ticked to identify assets that the FSA define as non-standard.

Investments with zero values. There is an option on the Amend Stocks screen to include a particular investment in valuations even if the value is zero (to cater for investments that have been suspended at nil value but not written off).