Sharesight's 10 year fintech journey

Sharesight was officially formed as a company on September 3rd 2007 -- making this year our 10th birthday. To celebrate, we wanted to share a timeline of our most important milestones and achievements, plus details of all the features we’ve added over the last 10 years in order to improve Sharesight and make tracking the true performance of your share portfolio easier than ever.

Sharesight founders Scott Ryburn, Marcus Baguley, Nigel Ramsay and Tony Ryburn.

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2007

Sharesight Milestones

• 3 September 2007 -- Sharesight's birthday!
• 1st Sharesight blog post.

Sharesight Features

• All Trades Report launches, displaying opening and closing balances at cost price.
• Taxable Income Report for NZ income and overseas income to match the format of the NZ IR3 tax return.
• Saved settings for portfolio performance criteria -- allows date range, and dollars/percent selections to persist between logins.
• Updated UI includes rollover effects when hovering over portfolio and share detail tables.
• Navigation improvement -- “next” buttons allows to quickly jump between shares in a portfolio.
• 10 years of ASX historical data allows retrospective performance calculations.
• Share price change alerts & weekly portfolio performance emails feature.

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2008

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• Sharesight signs up first paying customer in April 2008.
• BDO New Zealand signs on with Sharesight to manage client portfolios.

Sharesight Features

• Sold Securities Report permits the editing of historic dividend or trade details of sold shares.
• New Zealand FIF Report for investments in Australian shares showing whether NZ’s FIF taxation rules apply and calculating taxable FIF income on these shares.
• Performance Report -- so you can calculate your portfolio’s performance over any date range.

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2009

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• Sharesight Xero Integration -- Sharesight integrates with the Xero API v1 to allow investors to automatically upload share investment data into Xero’s accounting system.
• Sharesight becomes a Xero Network Certified Partner.

Sharesight Features

• Sharesight “remember me” function improves -- allows settings to be remembered across multiple computers.

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2010

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• Direct Broking partners with Sharesight, to allow investors to directly import trades into Sharesight through the Sharesight API.
• RewardSuper integrates Sharesight data into their RSTradeweb product.
• Deloitte New Zealand begins using Sharesight to manage client portfolios.

Sharesight Features

• Excel exports allows portfolios to be exported and modified in Microsoft Excel.
• Dividend Reinvestment Plan function simplifies the process of recording and tracking dividend reinvestments.
• Improvements to both the Performance Report and the Sold Shares Report.
• Support for both international shares and custom unlisted holdings.

The original Sharesight website in 2011.

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2011

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• Sharesight launches in Australia.
• Andrew Bird appointed to Sharesight board for Australian expansion.
• Sharesight launches a free online share portfolio tracker plan.

Sharesight Features

• Custom Labels feature allows investors to create custom labels and apply them to shares in a portfolio, then run reports against specific categories of shares based on these labels.
• Diversity Report provides a detailed breakdown of investments by industry classification, investment type (shares, options, funds etc), market, and country.
• Bulk import of historical trades improves with CSV import support.
• Support for automatic trade imports via Trade Confirmation Emails.

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2012

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• CMC Markets Stockbroking partners with Sharesight using the Sharesight API -- allows CMC Markets Stockbroking customers to link their CMC online broking account to a Sharesight portfolio and have all past and future share trading transactions automatically recorded in Sharesight.

Sharesight Features

• Complete redesign of Sharesight Trade Confirmation Emails (contract note) feature.
• Major enhancements to Xero integration.
• Sharesight Pro launches for accounting partners.
• Automatic Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRP) feature.
• Notes and file attachments for holdings plus support for PDF report exports.
• Australian CGT Report ‘lock periods’ introduced -- allows investors to specify a CGT sale allocation method against each shareholding, and lock each CGT reporting period to save CGT sale allocations against the period.

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2013

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• Opened Sharesight’s Australian office in Sydney.
• New Sharesight Pro pricing plans.
• New Sharesight Pro logo design.
• Whitelabel Sharesight marketing materials available for Sharesight Pro clients.
• Sharesight co-founder Tony Ryburn and his wife Merle help set up KES the Kenya Excellent Centre and School.

Sharesight Features

• Consolidated Views allows investors to run a selection of reports across multiple portfolios.
• Sharesight navigation menu -- now uses a tabbed layout.
• Carry forward loss allows a carry-forward amount from the previous reporting period to be included in current report totals.

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2014

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• CMC Premium Traders get access to the Sharesight Investor Plan for free.
• Stockspot (Australia's 1st robo-advisor) partners with Sharesight, giving Stockspot customers access to Sharesight’s portfolio admin and reporting features.
• Sharesight wins Xero Add-On Partner of the Year 2014, industry-specific.
• Xero Cashbook available via Sharesight.

Sharesight Features

• Support for over 10,000 Australian and New Zealand managed funds.
• Massive Sharesight user interface update.
• Sharesight Pro clients can track Macquarie Cash Management Accounts (CMAs).
• Broker Import feature allows investors to instantly import trading history directly from their broker even if they are not yet a Sharesight API partner.
• Share Checker allows quick lookups of specific shares without adding them to a portfolio.
• Track cash & fixed interest investments via Xero.
• Multiple improvements made to the Sharesight performance charting engine.
• Custom groupings, display options, and even more chart improvements.
• Track mFund from ASX.
• Login to Sharesight using Google.

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2015

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• Sharesight becomes a Silver Xero Partner & Certified Advisor (Sharesight has since become a Gold Xero Partner).
• ESUPERFUND & EBROKING integrate Sharesight into their SMSF administration platform and broking platforms.
• Intelligent Investor partners with Sharesight allowing their clients to import holdings directly into a custom Sharesight version.
• Sharesight announces executive appointments: CEO Doug Morris and CTO Scott Ryburn.
• Sharesight launches globally -- investors may signup for Sharesight from any country.
• Sharesight launches in Canada.
• Sharesight wins "Best Tech" award at the Afiniation Showcase.
• Sharesight becomes a Cuffelinks Alliance Partner.
• Sharesight raises NZ$2 million in capital via a customer-lead crowd fund.

Sharesight Features

• Benchmarking feature allows investors to compare their portfolio performance against a number of market indexes.
• Enhanced staff sharing permissions allows Sharesight Pro partners to create as many logins for their colleagues as they need, while controlling who can do what.
• Bulk email contract note processing allows multiple contract notes to be attached to an email for automatic and instantaneous processing.
• Improved date range selectors make it easier to select from a list of standard date ranges and custom selections.
• New markets: Euronext, three Canadian stock markets and Hong Kong.
• New markets: Singapore, Frankfurt and Johannesburg.
• New markets: Switzerland and Tokyo.
• Performance & tax report exports now available in XLSX/OpenXML format.
• Ability to merge custom holdings to newly supported listed securities.
• Ability to open Sharesight reports directly in Google Sheets.

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2016

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• Livewire market insights visible within Sharesight portfolios.
• Bendigo Bank partners with Sharesight, allowing investors using Bendigo Invest Direct to import their trades directly into Sharesight.
• Bank of Queensland partners with Sharesight, allowing investors using BOQ Trading to import trades directly into a custom version of Sharesight.
• PwC chooses Sharesight to join the PwC Next platform.
• Simply Wall St integrates with the Sharesight API, allowing investors to directly import their portfolio into Simply Wall St and use their beautiful portfolio visualisation tools.
• Sharesight becomes a founding member of FinTech Australia.
• Sharesight Mobile App launches and, gives investors access to their portfolio on the go.
• Australian robo-adviser Six Park integrates with the Sharesight API to provide a custom interface for their clients.
• Macrovue partners with Sharesight to offer their clients enhanced performance and tax reporting.
• 2017 stock picking competition launches.

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2017

Sharesight Milestones / Partnerships

• Sharesight nominated for Investment Innovator of the Year by Fintech Business.
• Sharesight becomes a sponsor of Rails Girls Wellington.
• The Australian British Chamber of Commerce nominates Sharesight to represent Australian fintech at the British Australian Fintech Forum.
• Sharesight wins the “Finnies” award for Excellence in Industry Collaboration and Partnerships (Australia).
• The FinTech Australia ecosystem map launches, featuring Sharesight and highlighting the importance of partnerships in the Australian fintech ecosystem.

Sharesight Features

• Contribution Analysis Report feature analyses the drivers behind a portfolio’s performance, be they stock selection, asset allocation, or exposure to certain countries, sectors, or industries.
• 20-minute delayed pricing for NZX holdings allows investors to track performance during the day in near-real time.
• 20-minute delayed pricing for ASX holdings allows investors to track performance during the day in near-real time.
• New Sharesight Help website launches, with updated design and localised help pages.
• Public Portfolios launch, allows sharing of a “Sharesight light” portfolio without a login.
• Merge holding feature launches, allows easier handling of takeovers / mergers.
• Sharesight moves to Amazon Aurora Database, speeding-up backend performance by almost 5x.

It has been a massive 10 years at Sharesight, the team here looks forward to realising our plans for the next ten years!

Stay tuned for our next blog post celebrating Sharesight's 10th birthday, where we interview co-founder Tony Ryburn on why he founded Sharesight.

FURTHER READING

• Sharesight.com -- Sign up to Sharesight for FREE
• Blog -- Sharesight wins 2017 Finnies award for Excellence in Industry Collaboration & Partnerships
• Blog -- Power your business with the Sharesight API
• Blog -- Why you should partner with Sharesight