AIC Income Builder - Free Virtual Portfolio Tool

[DavidM13]

This is a useful tool. I need to get two March/June/September/December dividend payers for my ISA on Monday.

I have 30 investment trusts in my ISA and need to balance the monthly payments for a regular retirement income when i go in the next two years, or sooner.

Not a good basis for investment, but works OK for me.

We are very glad you find it useful!

Do remember you can click through on the company to open up their profile in a separate tab. And link to their literature too. Definitely I would not advocate basing decisions solely on month of payment! But I am sure there are some strong performers who pay in those months.

Regarding EAT, M* have altered the dividend slightly based on a January exchange rate, so not sure if that makes a difference. It will show on Monday. If still out it would be most helpful if the poster with the issue could send me a direct message on here to explain exactly what you are choosing and the dates and we can investigate further with Morningstar. I think this is one of only a couple of funds that declares dividends in a different currency than it trades but we still want to ensure there are no issues in that regard.

[seagles]

I subscribed and "played" with it. It doesn't give me much more than I get from HL to be honest. Did look nice and I would use it if the Diary function actually showed declared forward dividends. I looked at april and only JETI was shown for the 5th, but SCF and MCT seemed to be missing.

I will use this though for the forecast yield display as before I had to look at each of my holdings seperately to see these (used in a spreadsheet as the screenscrape software associated with mine uses Sharecast and that never seems to match and doesn't return MCT).

Hi Seagles,
The Dividend Diary is designed to show ALL declared dividends.

SCF has an ex-date of 4th April but it is the pay date we show on the feature. This shows up on 29th April on the diary.

Regarding MCT (Middlefield Canadian) the last dividend pay date that I see is 31st January and that is reflecting in the tool. Where are you seeing an April dividend?

It did not show SCF on 29th yesterday, the diary only had one entry and that was JETI? MCT I had to trawl over to their own web-site for that, but they have always been a bit flaky on every site I have checked. (edited. My mistake I was looking at last years announcement which was on 5th April with dividend on 29th, so we will probably get an announcement of Aprils divi shortly)

Good tool though and thanks for letting us all know.

Just checked the diary for April. MCT is there but the 29th is not highlighted even though SCF is in my portfolio and in the list. Today's "box" does not show JETI though, seems a little problem with the diary.

[everhopeful]

I have now added my Income ITs to this tool and am very pleased with it. It does have the potential to inform investment decisions rather akin to creating a bond ladder for fixed interest. As I reinvest my income the timing of the dividends is not that important but a very useful tool nonetheless.

[mickeypops]

Love this tool! It would be good to see the monthly total above the bar for each month.

Many thanks AIC.

[seagles]

My enhancement request has already been mentioned. The ability to chose "financial year" along with "year" and "last 12 months".

I just checked the actual figures I received and against this tool and it was within £2 for the last 12 months, which depending on rounding is absolutely excellent. Again thanks.

[kiloran]

It's a nice tool. Thanks!

It would be good to see the yield of the total portfolio, in addition to the yield of the individual components.

--kiloran

[mc2fool]

For now I can suggest the "Watchlist" functionality on the site which allows you to look at ALL your investments in one place.

The Income Builder looks like a nice tool but it's a shame that there isn't any integration with the Watchlists, as many AIC site users will already have their portfolios and/or ITs they are interested in in watchlists.

At the least it would be good if the list of ITs at the right could be populated from a watchlist, as that would make putting together a portfolio much much easier for those that already have watchlists.

I suppose you could make the AIC sector drop down select list be "AIC sector/Watchlist" and include a list of Watchlist: <name>, ... at the bottom of the list, or maybe have two select elements, one for AIC sector and another for Watchlists and radio buttons to select between them...

[mickeypops]

John Laing Environmental Assets is missing dividends from September and March......

[mickeypops]

.... also, European Assets divs are overstated - possibly quoted the EUR value and not GBP?

Thanks again

MP

[77ss]

Given the recent news that the free AIC Income Builder pages have now become active, and knowing the importance that many of us here place on gaining income from the huge range of investment companies available to us, I thought it was going to be worth having a separate thread for it, rather than risk any off-topic conversations relating to it confusing other existing threads.

So here's a link to the new AIC Income Builder tool -

https://www.theaic.co.uk/income-finder/sign-in

Here's some of the features of the free tool -

• Create your own virtual portfolio to track the total income it paid over the year, and when.
• Fine-tune your portfolio to smooth monthly income throughout the year, ensure there are no periods without dividend payments, or shape your income to meet your needs
• View past dividends for income-paying investment companies
• Research dividend data to aid your analysis
• Find income articles, guides, videos and jargonbusters

We're very lucky to have a poster associated with this new tool here as a Lemon Fool member, and I know he's keen to hear feed-back from anyone that's interested in the tool, so those discussions would probably be better taking place on this separate dedicated thread now, if possible.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Thanks for the heads-up. A potentially useful tool. I have now had a look, but don't really see what it would do for me.

It needs to be more comprehensive. Of my 9 ITs, it is missing 1 (ATT) and the coverage of REITs looks very patchy - BBOX is in, but HSTN and SGRO are not.

At the personal level, if I were to use this tool, I would want to be able to build portfolios using TIDMs as well as the company names.

Not being negative about the effort, which I commend, just giving feedback.

[DavidM13]

Morning All, Some further feedback, and I am glad you are enjoying the function.

1) We are working on a download tool which will aid some of the requests on averages and provide more help on your analysis.
2) We took a conscious decision to keep separately from the Watchlist for various reasons. We would hope it shouldn't be too much of a hardship to recreate as a one off due to the relatively small universe of companies.
3) Tax year is an interesting and sensible request that can be considered further. It is not a quick build though so I can't make a promise there.
4) Couple of data issues we will investigate separately and have M* fix up if they are wrong.
5) Regarding the universe questions and missing companies. We are confident the universe is 100% full and complete and working as we want it to. We always aim to cover all companies within our universe. ATT is in our universe but doesn't pay dividends so should not appear in the Income Finder. SRGO is not a company within our universe. It is a commercial property company, which carries a different listing chapter than standard Investment Companies. Same for Hansteen.
6) To the gentleman who wanted to see the Monthly total above each bar you can do this already. Simply de-select "Show breakdown". Now when you hover over each bar you can see the monthly total. Having on "as standard" could get a little messy.
7) Finally I am not yet following the problem regarding MCT, SCT on the dividend diary. Everything seems to be working fine on that to me. I created a portfolio with just MCT and SCF in. When I chose that portfolio, rather than "None" on the Dividend Diary both the 29th and 30th April show up in red highlighted. Further when you access each day those two companies are highlighted again.

[Steve1982]

One further request ...

In the "list of companies that can be added", I can click on the company name to see its associated profile page. However, I can't do the same thing in the list of companies in the actual portfolio. Could this be added?

This would be so much easier than filtering/searching in the "full universe" list or using existing AIC homepage / wishlist features to get to the company page.

[seagles]

MCT was my fault I was "too early" on the divi announcement. SCF is still an anomally. I have it in my list, when I then click on "Dividend Diary" and select my portfolio, I get 5th and 30th Highlighted for JETI and MCT but 29th for SCF is not highlighted, but if I "click" on 29th SCF is in the list of IT's paying out? So why not highlighted... To confound this sometimes it is "highlighted" so what is the difference, over to the software engineers for that one.

[seagles]

MCT was my fault I was "too early" on the divi announcement. SCF is still an anomally. I have it in my list, when I then click on "Dividend Diary" and select my portfolio, I get 5th and 30th Highlighted for JETI and MCT but 29th for SCF is not highlighted, but if I "click" on 29th SCF is in the list of IT's paying out? So why not highlighted... To confound this sometimes it is "highlighted" so what is the difference, over to the software engineers for that one.

I owe everyone an apology. I have spent many years in IT and service, you would think I would check and double check. It appears I created 2 portfolio's, do not remember doing that, strangely they are the same ITs, except one does not have SCF. Problem did not exist, explains why it was there one moment and the next gone.

[Steve1982]

In case you're unaware, there's still a problem with European Asset Trust (EAT).

My Jan 2019 EAT Income Builder payment has been reduced (from 475.06 to 440.16) but this is still more than double the correct value. The BMO/EAT website states £0.0149 as the sterling Jan 2019 dividend, and this matches actual cash received (200).

Also, EAT has now disappeared from the list of companies that can be added to a portfolio, though its still there on my actual portfolio.

[DavidM13]

In case you're unaware, there's still a problem with European Asset Trust (EAT).

My Jan 2019 EAT Income Builder payment has been reduced (from 475.06 to 440.16) but this is still more than double the correct value. The BMO/EAT website states £0.0149 as the sterling Jan 2019 dividend, and this matches actual cash received (200).

Also, EAT has now disappeared from the list of companies that can be added to a portfolio, though its still there on my actual portfolio.

Thanks Steve, the company disappears from the list of companies when added to a current portfolio. But as soon as you wish to change or create another portfolio without EAT already in it, it will be available for selection again. I agree it is over-counting the total and have taken it up with the data provider already. The software is doing as it is told but they have provided a (potentially) erroneous second dividend that I am trying to have them remove. You will note it is more in line on our overview page.

[DavidM13]

Data provider is still having problems with EAT. We have manually over-ridden the values and will continue to do so daily until they have a fix. There may be small differences based on currency exchange rates used but the large difference caused by an erroneous, and unexplained, dividend has been eliminated.

Hoping to get the download facility early next week.

[Steve1982]

the company disappears from the list of companies when added to a current portfolio. But as soon as you wish to change or create another portfolio without EAT already in it, it will be available for selection again.

Thanks for working towards a fix for the EAT dividend values.

Since it sounds like development is still being done ... can I repeat my suggestion that it would be really useful if we were able to click on the names of companies in the income portfolio to go to their associated profile page? Currently, the only way to inspect the company profile from the Income Builder page is to go to the AIC Home page then search or view a watchlist.

Its particularly frustrating when this functionality is available in the "can be added" list - which shows all the companies NOT in my portfolio (& a bunch of non-AIC members that can't even be added to the income portfolio) - but not the actual companies I'm interested in.

[DavidM13]

Hi Steve,

I did note the feedback and it has been added to the list of consideration. However it is not a quick fix at all I am afraid. The company has gone from residing in a "live and interactive" list to some form of embedded, static data table as soon as it has been ported across. Whilst not ideal there are a couple of very quick workarounds:

1) Have another internet window open pointing at the main site and navigate that way via "Find & Compare Investment Companies"
2) When on the Income Builder, click "Add New Portfolio". This will ensure a blank canvas with ALL companies available and a quick link to the overview page. You can always delete it quickly if you do not wish to have extra portfolios around.

Best Regards and as I say, all feedback will be considered in due course.

David

[Steve1982]

David,

if making the company name clickable is difficult, perhaps your programmers could consider simply putting a "view profile" icon beside the existing "edit this item" & "delete this item" icons?

Steve