Import trades with the Sharesight File Importer

One of the most important steps for investors looking to get the most out of Sharesight, is importing their full trading history when they create their portfolio. That’s easy if all the trades were made with a broker that connects to the Sharesight API, but what if that’s not the case? What’s the best way then?

Fortunately, the Sharesight File Importer allows investors to import trades going back up to 20 years by uploading a spreadsheet containing the required trade details to Sharesight.

Here’s how the File Importer makes setting up a Sharesight portfolio easy.

Formatting your historical trades spreadsheet

The key to using the Sharesight File Importer to backfill a portfolio’s trade history is ensuring the data is in the expected format for the importer.

Most brokers allow investors to download their trading history details in a spreadsheet (usually a CSV file, but Sharesight also supports XLS/XLSX files). Once downloaded this spreadsheet just needs to be modified to contain:

• Headers for each column in the first row of the spreadsheet
• At a minimum, columns for the following 6 data points: Date of trade, Instrument Ticker/Code, Market Code, Quantity, Price per Share, Transaction Type (i.e. buy/sell)

Additional data points can also be imported into Sharesight using this method. For more details on how to format spreadsheets for this process, read this File Importer help page.

Using the Sharesight File Importer

Using the File Importer is easy. To get started, log in to Sharesight (or sign up for a free account) and when setting up a portfolio, click the ‘Import from a File’ tile.

Once in the File Importer, select the spreadsheet of trades to upload and Sharesight will start the import process. After some time spent processing the data in the spreadsheet, the importer will ask you to match the column headers with the Sharesight field types they correspond to.

After this, the File Importer processes the data and allows you to review an itemised list of your trades, make edits to any trade details to match it up to the expected data in Sharesight, and double check any fields highlighted in blue that are in the right format, but differ from the expected values (such as a price different to the value Sharesight has for that day) for that particular investment.

If there are any trades the Sharesight File Importer is unable to import, these will be listed under the ‘Rejected Trades’ tab. Often this will happen because a particular transaction is not supported by Sharesight (such as options or CFDs) however fields highlighted in red (as below) may be due to a number of common issues that are easy to solve.

Changes made to fields such as ‘Instrument’ will propagate to all fields with the same data once an instrument has been matched to data in Sharesight, making it easy to work on large spreadsheets using the File Importer.

Once fields marked in red are resolved, these will move across to ‘Ready to Import’ where they can be selected (either line by line, or all at once) and imported to the portfolio.

Sharesight File Importer notes

Read the Sharesight File Importer help page for an easy to follow step-by-step guide to using the importer. Some additional notes:

• The File Importer supports spreadsheets using XLXS/XLX/CSV file formats
• The importer has some logic to interpret the names used for data in each column, but investors are advised to use these Column Header Fields and format their data according to the example values on the help page
• If a particular broker is directly supported by Sharesight, investors should use the Broker & Provider Import tool as this will automatically recognise spreadsheet data for a particular broker
• The File Importer can import up to 500-1000 trades at a time, so investors should split large portfolios with more trades than this up into multiple spreadsheets to import their full historical data

File Importer walkthrough video

In this video Jess from Sharesight takes you through the process of setting up your spreadsheet and the necessary steps to import it into your Sharesight portfolio using the File Importer.

Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZlgOdulKGsk

Import your trades to Sharesight today!

If you’re not already a Sharesight user, what are you waiting for? Sign up now, it’s free to join, and with Sharesight you’ll get access to:

• Track all your investments in one place, including stocks, mutual/managed funds, property, and even cryptocurrency
• Get the true picture of your investment performance, including the impact of brokerage fees, dividends, and capital gains with Sharesight’s annualised performance calculation methodology
• Run powerful reports built for investors, including Performance, Portfolio Diversity, Contribution Analysis and Future Income (upcoming dividends)
• Run tax reports including Taxable Income (dividends/distributions), Capital Gains Tax (Australia and Canada), Traders Tax (Capital Gains for traders in NZ) and FIF foreign investment fund income reports (NZ)

Sign up for a FREE Sharesight account and get started tracking your investment performance (and tax) today.

FURTHER READING

• How Sharesight calculates your investment performance
• 7 reasons why Sharesight is better than a spreadsheet
• Import trades via your broker’s trade confirmations