Bulk import historical buy and sell trades

Import a spreadsheet containing your historical buy and sell trades is a quick way to populate your trades into your Sharesight portfolio. Most brokers will enable you to download your historical trade history in a spreadsheet.

For your spreadsheet to successfully import:

• The first row of your file must contain a header for each column
• The spreadsheet must contain the 5 compulsory data fields

Download the template spreadsheet to create your historical trade spreadsheet if required:   Bulk Import Historical Trades Template Spreadsheet

Embedded content: https://youtu.be/w8j_MBg7lzQ

Step by step guide:

1 – Log into your broker or portfolio tracking provider and download your historical trades as a spreadsheet file.

2 – Open the downloaded spreadsheet file and check it has the 5 compulsory fields, column headings on the first row and data format required for the file importer feature.

3 – Login to Sharesight.

4 – On the Let’s get started with Sharesight page, select the Import from a file tile.

5 – Select Choose file.

6 – From the Open file window, find and select your downloaded historical trade spreadsheet. The file will likely be in your downloads folder.

7 – Click Open.

8 – Select Individual trades.

9 – Click Next.

10 – Select the date and price format used in the file.

11 – On the Bulk Trade Importer - Column Selection page; the left side column titles are your spreadsheet column headings. On the right is the Sharesight fields.

Sharesight will automatically suggest Sharesight fields. To change the selections, select from the dropdown menu to match the Sharesight field to your spreadsheet column content. Make sure the 5 compulsory fields are selected. If a field isn’t required select __ “-“ __.

12 – Once all columns have been matched with the correct Sharesight field or ”-“. Click Import.

13 – The next page will show an itemised list of all trades importing from the spreadsheet.

There are 3 tabs at the top of the page:

- This tab contains the number of trades that have been imported in this process.

- This tab contains the number of trades that are available to import, they can be edit and deselected from this tab.

- This tab contains the number of trades that are currently not available to import this is due to them either not being supported but Sharesight i.e. CFDs or the trade does not contain the minimum 6 data points need to successfully import.

The solutions to common errors can be found here.

To edit the trade data click on the pen icon.

Edit the trade data and then click the save icon to save.

14 – Once you have verified the trade data, click Finish and Import All.

15 – Once the trades are imported, the trades move to the Imported Trades tab. Click on Back to Portfolio to load the Portfolio Overview Page .

Your holdings will be calculated by Sharesight’s performance calculation methodology which is a money-weighted return methodology, meaning the investment performance takes account of the size and timing of cash flows. Sharesight will automatically create dividends and corporate actions for the holdings you have imported.

Now that you have populated your portfolio we recommend you:

1 - Review the trades imported:

a – Handle any negative holdings - Holdings with less buy trades than sell trades (can occur when transferred stocks from another broker, dividend reinvestment plan or off market purchases).

b - Handle any non automated corporate actions, such as mergers etc.

c - Check fractional share trades for rounding differences.

d - For international stocks, the exchange rates are generated by Sharesight using the end of day exchange rate, these can be edited within the trade.

2 - Set up any dividend reinvestment plan.

3 - Verify and confirm automatically generated data (dividends and corporate actions).

4 - Set up the Trade Confirmation Emails feature to automatically import future trades.

5 - Share access to your portfolio with your accountant.

6 - Add your other investments to Sharesight.

Compulsory Fields

Optional Fields

Column Sharesight does not need

• Instrument name – Sharesight data provide this information from the instruction and market codes.
• The total amount of holding bought or sold – Sharesight calculates this by the share price and quantity.

Would you like us to support other export files?

If you would like support for other export files, please let us know by ‘sharing an idea’ on the community forum. If someone else has already suggested that we add your broker, please click the ‘+1’ button to add your vote. This will allow us to prioritise support for additional brokers.

Important note on usage limits – Sharesight is designed for investors. Due to the real-time nature of our performance calculations, Sharesight is not suitable for active traders with large trading volumes. Sharesight is limited to a maximum of 300 trades per holding and works best with less than 3000 trades per portfolio. Our File import tool allows a maximum of 500 trades per spreadsheet file.

Note that if you have changed broker and have had your historical trades transfer to your new broker, these historical trades will not be on your spreadsheet file download from your new broker. You will need to download the spreadsheet from the original broker or adding the holdings and trades in manually.

Other supported files

The Sharesight file import feature also directly supports export files from the following systems:

• Direct Broking Limited
• Sharesight All Trades Report Export

Opening Balances

If you do not have all of your historical buy and sell transactions, you can import with Opening Balances

Last modified on April 10, 2024 UTC