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Banana Investment Accounting combines professional double-entry accounting with investment management in a single, integrated solution. Manage shares, bonds, funds, and other financial instruments in multiple currencies, directly within your accounting file.
It brings advanced investment accounting features, typically found only in specialized software, within reach of businesses, accounting professionals, and private investors.
By integrating investment management directly into double-entry accounting, every investment transaction becomes part of your financial accounting. You can keep track of investments, book values, realized and unrealized gains or losses, and exchange rate differences, while maintaining an up-to-date Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss statement.
A Precious Tool for Accounting Professionals
An increasing number of companies and individuals hold significant and increasingly complex investment portfolios. For accounting professionals, this creates new opportunities to provide specialized, value-added services.
Banana Investment Accounting makes it possible to manage financial accounting and investments within the same accounting system. By extending traditional accounting services to include investment accounting, professionals can better serve clients with complex financial assets and create opportunities for additional services, including financial reporting, investment monitoring, and advisory support.
Banana Investment Accounting can be particularly useful for:
- Companies holding and managing different types of investments
- Pension funds managing multi-asset investment portfolios
- Family offices managing multi-asset investment portfolios
- Independent accountants providing investment accounting services
- High-Net-Worth Individuals and Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals managing complex investment portfolios
- Non-profit organizations managing investments or endowment funds.
The Advantages of Double-Entry Accounting
Many people managing investments still rely on accounting software that does not integrate investment management. As a result, they often need separate spreadsheets to calculate book values, gains and losses, and other investment-related information. This can be time-consuming and makes reconciliation more difficult, especially when investments are held with multiple banks or custodians that provide reports using different formats and valuation methods.
With Banana Investment Accounting, investment transactions are integrated directly into a consistent double-entry accounting system. Investment data and financial accounting remain connected and can be reconciled and verified at any time.
Key advantages include:
- In the Items table, you can define your investments, including shares, bonds, funds, and other financial instruments, together with information such as the investment ID, currency, Asset Account, opening quantity, and prices.
- In the Transactions table, you can record purchases, sales, dividends, interest, charges, and other investment transactions, together with the investment ID, amount in transaction currency, exchange rate, quantity, and unit price.
- When an investment is sold, the Investment Accounting extension can calculate the realized gain or loss and, where applicable, the exchange rate gain or loss, and create the related accounting transactions.
- At any time during the year, the extension can calculate unrealized gains and losses and create the adjustment transactions required to align book values with current market prices and exchange rates.
- The accounting data is immediately reflected in the Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss statement, providing an up-to-date view of your financial position.
- The detailed investment and accounting data remains available for reconciliation, customized reporting, performance analysis, and tax-related reporting.
- Your accounting data remains under your control: Banana Accounting runs locally on your computer, and you decide where your accounting files are stored.
Investment accounting
Multi-currency investment accounting is one of the most complex areas in accounting.
It combines two different accounting approaches: financial accounting, based on the double-entry method, and securities accounting, which resembles inventory management, involving quantities and purchase prices.
- Introduction to Investment and Portfolio Accounting
People working in finance are usually sophisticated accountants who already know securities accounting very well. For those who are less familiar with the subject, managing securities accounting can be challenging. Therefore we have prepared a theoretical guide that outlines the key challenges, including how to determine the book value of investments and how to calculate realized and unrealized gains and losses, both on securities and on exchange rate differences. - How to start
A short guide that explains the logic and the workflow of Banana Investment Accounting. Here are the main steps:- Prior to starting investment accounting you need to set up all elements properly.
- When recording daily investment transactions, you also need to follow a specific workflow.
- At the end of the year you have to adjust the investment value to the market price by recording the unrealized profit or loss.
- Banana Investment Accounting can also be used by finance professors to improve investment accounting education.
Table-based accounting
Banana Accounting is similar to Excel, as all data is entered in tables. As in Excel, you always see all the relevant information. You can also easily search, select and modify the data.
If you are already familiar with investment accounting, this brief overview will help you understand how Banana Accounting works and whether it fits your needs. You also find links to more detailed information.
A typical Investment Accounting template or file includes the following elements:
- File properties
- Company names, Currency and Accounting Period.
- Settings specific to the Investment accounting.
- Accounts Table
- It contains the chart of accounts and defines how data is grouped for the Balance Sheet and Income Statement.
- Where you need to enter the Opening amounts.
- Items Table
- It lists and codes all investments, such as bonds, shares, and funds.
- The Asset Investment column links each security to its corresponding Balance Sheet account — a key element of the entire solution.
- Exchange Rate Table
It defines the currency codes and stores both opening and current exchange rates for accurate multi-currency management. - Transactions Table
- It records all investment transactions.
- Where you need to enter the double entry account, amounts and exchange rate for the financial accounting.
- Where you indicate the Item code, quantity and price specific for the Investment accounting.
- Double-Entry Accounting Reports
The software provides access to all standard accounting reports such as Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Account Cards, and more. - Investment Accounting Extensions
You need to install specific functionalities for investment management, including profit and loss calculations, valuation reporting, and other analytical tools tailored to securities accounting.
Accounts Table
Within the Accounts table you define all the accounts including the ones necessary for the Investment accounting: Balance Sheet accounts for investments, Profit and Loss Accounts.
- The accounting chart is fully customizable based on your specific needs.
- In the Account table you also enter the opening amounts and you see the current balance.
Items Table with all the Investments
In the Items table you enter the information for each investment.
Through the Asset Account, each security is linked to the Investment account you have specified in the Accounts table.
You also enter the opening quantity and price.
Transactions Table with Investments Details
The Transactions table is the core of the accounting, the place where you enter double entry accounting transactions.
- For transactions regarding Investments, you specify the Investment id, the quantity and the price.
- You can easily manage all the information in one place (Purchase of investments, Sale of investments, Realized and unrealized gains or losses on investments, Realized and unrealized exchange rate gains or losses, Commissions, Expenses, etc.)
- You can import transactions from bank statements and create rules that automatically complete them.
Balance Sheets & Income Statements
With predefined, fully customizable accounting plan and presentation, you can manage any kind of business, financial corporation, foundation, non-profit organization or private fortune.
Get instantly Balance sheet, Income statements and all the other double entry reports ready for auditing.
Investments and Portfolio Reporting
The software makes available multiple reports.
Getting Started
You can get started right away with the Banana Accounting Free plan and manage up to 70 transactions at no cost.
- Download Banana Accounting+ (version 10.2.8 or later).
- You can see how it works by using one of our templates.
- Adapt your current accounting in just a few steps.
- Use the Investment Accounting Extension (available only in the Advanced plan of Banana Accounting Plus) to calculate the profit or loss on the sale of securities and obtain various reports.
Pricing for Investment Accounting
The Investment Accounting integrated into the accounting system is a highly sophisticated solution, the result of years of development with the support of users. It was recently released to all our customers in order to allow them to evaluate it and provide further suggestions for improvement. For the time being, it is available under the Banana Accounting Plus Advanced plan. In the future, its use may be offered under a specific subscription plan.
Documentation
Limitations
The current version has some limitations:
- There is no automatic update of market prices.
Current prices must be entered manually or imported from other tools. - The current account value of each item is available as a report, but it is not displayed in the Items table.
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Is there more you need?
The solution is already used by several customers, but we still consider it under development, as we continue to improve it based on user feedback and requests. We also plan to add the automatic import of investment data (ISIN, quantity, price, commission) from bank statements.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions or requests. Given the time invested in development and the high value it provides to select customers, we may offer it through a specific subscription plan in the future.