Another use case for my wife and I (Kiwi’s living in London)
UK ISA
UK SIPP
UK General
NZ Kiwisaver
NZ General
x 2 = 10 portfolios.
The inability to tag transactions against a broker/different cash account makes it even more difficult. Ideally there would be sub portfolios for each broker.
This excludes other tax schemes such as EIS and SEIS which would technically be another portfolio.
I am currently at my max of 10 portfolios. I manage accounts for my wife and 2 children. I am in Canada. Each of us has a TFSA, RRSP, and regular margin and cash accounts. I also have separate short-term trading accounts in addition to our investment accounts. As I am at my portfolio limit the rest of the accounts are currently outside of Sharesight. Since I manually load all trades it really seems that it would be reasonable to increase the number of portfolios under my current arrangement.
Hello Jess, nice to meet you. I am very happy to join this group.
@Jessinv_Sharesight I agree with @Tristan . I am in Canada and I have the investor plan that is limited to 6 portfolios which is not enough.
It would be great to have 10 portfolios for the Investor plan and 20 or unlimited portfolios for the Expert plan.
Thank you
One thing to keep in mind is you can have multiple brokers in the same portfolio. For example on my personal portfolio I have three brokers but a single tax entity. Personally I would rather be charged by number of portfolios than by number of shares.
Completely agree. I am currently limited to 4 portfolios on Expert plan. Was told I need to go to Sharesight Pro to add another one which is 100% cost increase. In hindsight I should have signed up on the Canadian website to get 10 portfolios (at less cost) and then set the Tax Residency to where I am actually based…
With your scenario where you have multiple brokers in the same portfolio, do you have any shares that are common between the brokers? I asked about splitting a holding within a portfolio between brokers but that wasn’t supported at the time - has that changed or do you perhaps have a workaround?
I have the same issue. The inability to track holdings by broker is very frustrating.
IMO the commentary earlier about one portfolio per tax entity is not realisitic due to the various limitations of the system, e.g. inability to segregate parcels / trades in separate broker accounts, inability to handle cash positions / trades of different currencies in a single broker account, non-super vs super, etc.
People would have to setup 1 portfolio per broker / super account, and potentially even 1 portfolio per currency in a broker account (e.g. in an Interactive Brokers account) to be able to track things properly. Thus IMO the current portfolio limit based on tax entities is not adequate for realistic usage.
It would certainly be possible to have the same share held with more than one broker in the same portfolio. You could have the email set up within each portfolio so trades are uploaded to Sharesight automatically. What you would not get is a breakdown of how many you hold with each broker. The primary function of the program monitoring your returns.
I think the best way is to set it up as one portfolio per tax entity and then use the grouping facility when you want to see the combined returns.
I am an NZ user on the expert plan and am perturbed to read this thread and see that other users in other countries have 5-10 portfolios with their plan. I only have 4. Why is this? I’ve been a loyal user with an expert subscription since 2017, some 4, going on 5 years.
Can someone from sharesight contact me to see what can be done about this. I regularly recommend your software to new investors asking me for advice.
I would find it useful to use a 5th portfolio as a watch list to track stocks/funds I’m interested in.
thanks
To start with, at least watchlists should not be included in number of portfolios. They are just watchlists and nothing else. We’ve to go be sharechecker one by one, or maintain outside sharesight. Quite inconvenient
The concern is more that the shares from different brokers are amalgamated with no easy way of differentiating them. It’d be great to be able to split a share holding directly as dividends may be paid into different accounts or you might have a DRP setup for one of the brokers.
No. I have the same share in different portfolios (tax entities) but within the one portfolio I will use the same broker for each individual company share even though I use multiple brokers on the one portfolio. As you say Sharesight does not allocate the same share on the basis of a broker/portfolio combination only on the basis of portfolio. As I mentioned the primary aim of the program is to track returns and I think this an over complication. There is no problem it automatically updating the trades and giving you the correct total and correct brokerage no matter how many brokers you use for a particular share.
I agree that it wouldn’t make much difference if your only use for Sharesight is performance monitoring - but I also use Sharesight to assist with my quite complicated tax planning and also record keeping.
In my situation I have shares bought via Broker A and B. The shares were bought in multiple trades via the 2 brokers over a 20 year period. When I sell shares from Broker B there is no way for Sharesight to correctly track the CGT and cost base for the holding. The only option I have is to split my tax entity into separate portfolios per broker - otherwise my CGT report is incorrect.
Another option that would alleviate the problem - allow users to apply a sell to a particular parcel of shares. This would be in line with the ato advice as well I believe - Identifying shares or units sold | Australian Taxation Office
No the broker makes no difference as far as capital gains tax is concerned. There are two ways the ATO allows capital gains to be calculated Last In First Out and Average Purchase. SS supports both and in either case the broker is not relevant. Let us say you purchased some BHP from broker A, some from broker B and some were issued by the company as a dividend reinvestment plan. It makes no difference to CGT when you sell some if they are from one block or another or a combination of two or three sources. The important thing is to have the transactions entered correctly with correct dates, brokerage and prices. If you do that SS will calculate CGT properly.
Blockquote
This doesn’t match the advice provided by the ATO or any of the accountants that I’ve had in the last 20 years. Each parcel of shares you own is an individual CGT Asset and, so long as you can identify the parcel explicitly (like by a broker or share certificate), you can explicitly elect from which parcel you are selling. This is true for selling part of the parcel as well. https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Tax-return/2021/In-detail/Publications/Guide-to-capital-gains-tax-2021/?page=30
Relevant quote from ATO:
If you have the relevant records (for example, share certificates), you may be able to identify which particular shares or units you have disposed of. In other cases, the Commissioner will accept your selection of the identity of shares disposed of.
Alternatively, you may wish to use a ‘first in, first out’ basis where you treat the first shares or units you bought as being the first you disposed of.
In limited circumstances, we will also accept an average cost method to determine the cost of the shares disposed of. You can only use this average cost method when:
- the shares are in the same company
- the shares are acquired on the same day
- the shares have identical rights and obligations, and
- you are not required to use market value for cost base purposes.
Hi @Tristan . My situation is pretty similar to yours. I have 11 portfolios:
I started with one paid account and edged up each plan level as I got used to SS - and found each level uplift enhanced my experience until I hit five portfolios. I looked at Pro and also baulked at the cost/portfolio - and the pro features are (correctly) targeted at planning groups etc - which is not what I do.
I used to run the children in a spreadsheet off SS but I got to the stage where I was spending more time on their small portfolios than on the much larger portfolios in SS. So, I decided to add them to SS but also needed more than 5 portfolios.
I spoke to the excellent SS helpdesk who recommended I set up multiple accounts and share the portfolios back to a main account. I now have three sharesight accounts (via three emails accounts) and it all works really well. I login to my main account and spend 95% of my time there. This includes consolidated reporting, Xero feeds, etc. CGT calcs also work well.
There are some very minor niggles with this approach (e.g. groups) but, overall, I find the portfolio limit issue has been solved for me, and the cost/portfolio is still compelling.
(As an aside, I post the children, me and my wife’s portfolios to a single Xero account. Given SS acts as the subledger the Xero reporting is simplified)
Hope this helps
@mwse thanks for the response.
The tip about sharing the kids “free” portfolios back into the main portfolio is handy. Helps me avoid having to sign of with multiple google accounts. I’ll also have a think about whether it would be helpful to setup Xero Sync for the kids accounts (they are legally within the Family Trust, just separated out into different brokerages for when the kids get old enough and want to take control of their own portfolios).
The challenge I’ve been having with Xero sync is multiple brokerages for the same account (eg. I have the share trading accounts set up with each brokerage but I funnel all the dividends back into the main family trust account). I’ve resigned myself to the fact that Xero reconciliation is just going to be difficult and its made worse by the fact that one of my trading accounts doesn’t allow Xero syncronisation so its a bit of a clunky reconciliation process (but I’m going to keep persisting to try and get a setup that works and can get me a near-enough cash balance in sharesight)
I agree that Sharesight Expert level (5 portfolios) is good value for what it delivers. I reckon its giving me more value than a WRAP because I really like the custom investments.
To identify a particular parcel of shares you would only be able to do one buy trade with one broker. Otherwise if you buy 100 shares one day and 100 on another day and then sell 50 at another how could you know if that 50 is from the first or second parcel. Last in First out and average purchase supports buying from multiple brokers. If you were holding shares in parcels linked to particular brokers then by definition an off market transfer of shares from one HIN to another would cause a capital gains tax event. So shares are held by tax entity not a combination of tax entity and broker. The ATO may allow you to hold them as a seperate parcel but then as explained you could only buy once otherwise impossible to identify which parcel a share belongs to.