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Prepare your annual accounts with our Historical Cost Report

by Stephanie Stefanovic, Content Manager, Sharesight | Jan 24th 2021
The below article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a product recommendation, or taxation or financial advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please check with your adviser or accountant to obtain the correct advice for your situation.

Sharesight’s Historical Cost Report enables investors to easily compare the market value and historical cost of their investment portfolio over any selected period. This report is a powerful tool for investors who need to prepare annual accounts, such as SMSF trustees or those with shares under a company or family trust, who may need to use mark-to-market accounting for their financial statements.

To learn more about how Sharesight’s Historical Cost Report helps investors prepare their annual accounts, keep reading.

Historical cost report (2)

1. Run the report over any date range

The Historical Cost Report allows investors to view the value of their holdings over the time period of their choice. For example, investors may choose to view the value of their holdings over the previous financial year for tax reporting or preparing SMSF annual accounts, or over custom quarterly and annual periods for balance sheet preparation.

image 1 historicalcost

2. Break down and analyse costs by their respective components

In the report, costs are split into a range of key components, the values of which can be arranged in ascending or descending order. For example, for holdings with buy or sell trades made during the selected period, investors can view the value of purchases and sales, and compare these values with the opening and closing balance to see how the value of their holdings at cost price has increased or decreased over the period.

Most importantly, investors can easily compare the difference between the holding’s closing balance and its closing market value. This will determine any unrealised capital gains or losses on the holding, should you need to provide this information in your SMSF annual accounts, taxes or other financial statements.

image 2 historicalcost

With the Historical Cost Report, investors can easily compare asset values such as the opening and closing balance, purchases, sales and closing market value.

Note: If you are looking for an easy way to calculate unrealised capital gains or losses on your investments (but don’t require it for financial accounts), Sharesight also has an Unrealised CGT Report for Australian tax residency portfolios. For realised capital gains, there is also a Capital Gains Tax Report for Australian and Canadian tax residency portfolios.

3. Take advantage of a range of advanced reporting options

Include brokerage

Investors can choose whether or not to include brokerage fees in their report, which affects the opening balance of their holdings. This allows brokerage to be treated as an expense if it is not included, or to be included in the cost base of the holdings, depending on your entity’s tax treatment.

Change grouping classifications

Investors can organise the holdings in their report by default groupings including market, sector, industry, investment type, country or no grouping at all.

image 3 historicalcost

Investors also have the option of applying a custom grouping to their report. For example, you may wish to differentiate between individual equities, ETFs, managed funds and currency accounts, as seen in the screenshot below.

image 4 historicalcost A Historical Cost Report with holdings arranged by a custom grouping.

4. Export this report to share with your accountant

Another convenient feature of the Historical Cost Report is the ability to share it with your accountant or financial advisor. To make this easier, Sharesight allows you to export the report to different file formats such as Google Sheets, XLS spreadsheet or PDF file.

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