BorderFolio/BorderFolio vs a spreadsheet
BorderFolio vs a spreadsheet
Last reviewed 31 August 2026
Most people who need a portfolio tracker already have one: a spreadsheet they built and trust. It is free, flexible and private, and for a simple portfolio it is genuinely the right tool. This page is about the point where it stops being that — historical currency, corporate actions, two different return figures, withholding that is not one flat rate — and about the failure mode nobody plans for, which is the month you stop updating it.
What the spreadsheet is genuinely better at
Any honest version of this page starts here, because most of the people reading it have a good spreadsheet and are right to be attached to it.
- It costs nothing and it is yours. No subscription, no company that can be acquired, no product decision that removes a column you relied on.
- It models anything. A pension you cannot import, a property, a private loan, a currency hedge you invented — five minutes of typing, not a feature request.
- It is private by construction. Nothing leaves your machine unless you send it somewhere.
- You know exactly what every number means, because you wrote the formula. Almost no product can say that.
If your portfolio is a handful of holdings in one currency and one tax system, and you enjoy maintaining it, a spreadsheet is not a compromise. It is the right tool and this page is not going to argue otherwise.
Where the arithmetic starts costing you
Spreadsheets do not fail loudly. They drift.
| The job | In a spreadsheet | Here |
|---|---|---|
| Getting history in | Retyping years of trades from statements, or an import that stops halfway | Upload the statement; positions, purchases, dividends and stated commissions are extracted for review |
| Prices | A quote formula that works until the provider throttles it or renames a field | Live market data for listed instruments; manual values where a quote is missing |
| Corporate actions | Splits, mergers and ticker changes silently break the cost basis of one row | Handled at import, with the rows it could not read named rather than guessed |
| Currency | Today's rate applied to every historical purchase — the most common quiet error there is | Each transaction converted at the rate on its own date, so contributions keep their original size |
| Contributions vs market growth | Possible, but usually collapses into one return figure after a year of edits | A running split, with pace, streak, gaps and a milestone trajectory |
| Dividend withholding | A flat percentage applied to everything, if it is modelled at all | Per instrument, from each fund's domicile against your residence, both steps separately |
| Fund domicile and estate exposure | Not usually in the model at all | Tracked, including the US-situs reference threshold |
| Maintenance | You, monthly, forever | Upload a statement when you want it refreshed |
The three errors almost every investment spreadsheet contains
- Converting history at today's rate. A contribution made three years ago gets revalued every time the exchange rate moves, so the record of what you invested changes retroactively — and a currency swing reads as saving harder. Converting at the rate on the transaction date is the fix, and it is tedious enough by hand that almost nobody does it.
- One number where there are two. A single "return" figure conflates money-weighted and time-weighted results. In a year with large contributions they can disagree violently — the same twelve months can be strongly positive by one measure and negative by the other — and the version in most spreadsheets is whichever one the formula happened to compute. A worked example of exactly that.
- Withholding as one flat rate. Applying 15% to every dividend hides the two things that matter: a US-domiciled fund charges your treaty rate on the whole distribution while an Irish UCITS charges 15% on its US slice only, and a Treasury fund is not taxed like a world equity fund at all. The model that does not flatten it.
The real cost is the month you stop
Spreadsheets rarely die of a broken formula. They die of a busy quarter. Two months of unentered trades become a reconciliation job, the reconciliation job becomes a task you keep moving, and a year later the file describes a portfolio you no longer have. Whatever it computed perfectly is worth nothing at that point.
The argument for a product is mostly this: refreshing means exporting a statement and uploading it, and a statement covering the whole gap fixes months of neglect in one pass, with duplicates skipped automatically. It is a lower activation energy than fifty rows of typing, which is the only reason the record survives a busy year.
Keeping the spreadsheet's virtues
- Nothing is added without you. Every import stops at a review screen; extraction is never treated as authoritative, and anything misread is edited before it lands.
- Manual entry stays available. Holdings can be typed and corrected by hand, exactly as in a sheet — a document is a shortcut, not a requirement. If uploading a statement anywhere is a privacy line you'd rather not cross, picking positions manually builds the same portfolio with no file involved.
- Never a broker password. A spreadsheet cannot touch your brokerage account, and neither can this: no broker login and no OAuth anywhere in the product, and nothing that can place a trade or move money. One broker, Freedom24, can optionally be connected with a read-only API key pair you generate and can revoke yourself; every other broker comes in as a statement, with no credential involved at all. Security and data handling.
- Leaving is one click. Delete a portfolio, or the whole account, yourself, in the app, immediately.
- Free is a real tier, not a trial: one portfolio, ten holdings, three document imports a month, no card.
When to stay in the spreadsheet
Keep the sheet if your holdings are few and in one currency, if everything you own is in one tax system, if you need to model assets a tracker will not import — property, pensions, private positions, individual bonds — or if maintaining it is something you actively enjoy. Those are good reasons, and none of them is solved by paying $149 a year.
Consider moving when the file starts answering questions it was not built for: money in different currencies, funds domiciled somewhere you do not live, a tax residence that has changed, or a history long enough that "how much of this did I actually put in" has become genuinely hard to reconstruct.
Common questions
Is a portfolio tracker actually better than a spreadsheet?
For a handful of holdings in one currency and one tax system, a spreadsheet is a legitimate choice and often the better one. A product earns its place when history has to be converted at historical exchange rates, corporate actions keep breaking cost basis, contributions need separating from market growth, or dividends are taxed in more than one country.
What is the most common error in an investment spreadsheet?
Converting historical transactions at today’s exchange rate. It silently rewrites what you contributed every time the currency moves, so a currency swing reads as if you had invested more. Converting each transaction at the rate on its own date is the fix.
Can I still enter holdings by hand?
Yes. Manual entry and editing are always available, and every statement import stops at a review screen you confirm — extraction is never treated as authoritative. A whole portfolio can be built manually, without uploading any document, for anyone who prefers not to share a statement.
What happens to my data if I stop using it?
You delete a portfolio, or the entire account, yourself in the app, immediately and irreversibly; uploaded statement files are deleted automatically within seven days regardless. There is no retention period to wait out and no email to support required.