share tracking over the years...

[Buffalo]

Does anyone have a good system of tracking their shares over a long period, which includes things such as; Buy date, top-up buy dates, dividend payouts, sell date, etc..?

I have, what is now a very large spreadsheet that I put together in excel over the years, but it has no inclusion of dividends (I track them separately at the moment) and looking at it this holiday period I can't help thinking that it's not the best way to be tracking the performance of my portfolio.

I assume there must be software packages, but if so, what?
If just excel is typically used are there any particular useful things you've used that assist on checking performance? In particular, I realise it is hard to track growth on long term shares - especially when trying to consider dividend yield over time/ within a year period.

[anonymous-user]

Sharescope. It has monthly data fees but makes it easy to track your investments.

It can also 'talk' to Excel if you're good with excel.

You can download the demo.

[chris7676]

Excel would still be the best bet - you can set it up the way you want to.
Sharescope is good for charting and alerts but NOT portfolio performance analysis as such (especially % wise).

[Buffalo]

This post led me to look into embedment of live data in excel, which I am currently fiddling with, although it looks like I might need to upgrade to latest excel (mine is 2004), as I only seem to have MSN Money links, which I'm not used to, nor does it seem easy to link to the ASX through it. I found these:

http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=yahoo+fina...

Looks promising as Yahoo finance seems to link ok to ASX... Will try it over the weekend with some new tweaks to my existing spreadsheet I want to try. But if there are any other hints and tips, I'd be very interested. Thanks.