Frequently asked questions

What is BorderFolio?

A portfolio tracker built around the money you put in rather than around today's market value. Your broker already shows what the portfolio is worth; BorderFolio records how it was built — every contribution, month by month — and separates that deposited capital from market growth. On top of that history it estimates what cross-border taxation does to your dividends, using the domicile of each fund you hold and the tax residence you configure.

Who is BorderFolio for?

Long-term index and FIRE investors who hold funds domiciled outside the country they live in — typically US-domiciled or Irish UCITS ETFs held from Georgia, the UAE, South Africa, the EU or elsewhere. It assumes you contribute regularly over years and care about pace, consistency and what actually reaches you after tax.

It is not built for day trading, options strategies or stock-picking signals. There are no rankings and no buy lists.

Does BorderFolio connect to my broker?

One broker, optionally: Freedom24 can be connected with an API key pair you generate in the broker's own cabinet — read-only, stored encrypted, revocable there at any time. No broker password or OAuth login is ever requested, for Freedom24 or anyone else, and nothing in the product can place trades or move money. Every other portfolio is built by uploading a statement or entering holdings manually.

A direct Interactive Brokers integration is on the roadmap as the same kind of optional convenience — statement import stays the default path, because it works with every broker.

Can BorderFolio track a Freedom24 account automatically?

Yes. Connect it with a read-only API key pair from the Freedom24 cabinet: the first sync pulls current positions and full trade history in under a minute, each buy becomes a dated contribution, and the portfolio refreshes nightly with a manual sync button on top. The connection implements only two read-only calls, so it cannot place orders or move money — and revoking the keys in the cabinet kills it instantly.

Details: tracking a Freedom24 account and how the API connection works.

Can BorderFolio import Interactive Brokers statements?

Yes. Upload an Interactive Brokers Activity Statement as PDF or CSV. BorderFolio extracts positions, purchases, dividends and the explicit commissions charged on each trade, shows everything for review, and skips transactions already imported from an earlier statement. Nothing enters the portfolio until you confirm the review.

Details, including what a multi-month statement backfills: how broker statement import works.

Which statement formats are supported?

PDF statements, CSV exports, plain text, and screenshots or photos of a broker app. Free accounts get 3 document imports a month; Pro is unlimited. Anything the extractor reads incorrectly can be corrected by hand during review, and holdings can always be entered manually instead.

Do I have to upload a statement at all?

No. Uploading is a shortcut, not a requirement. If you would rather not share a broker statement — for privacy or any other reason — you can pick your positions manually: search the instrument, enter the quantity, and the portfolio behaves exactly as if it had been imported.

Manual entry also skips the one privacy trade-off import carries: nothing is sent to the AI extraction step, because there is no document to read. What an uploaded file does go through is set out on the security & data handling page.

Does BorderFolio support US-domiciled and Irish-domiciled (UCITS) ETFs?

Yes, and the difference between them is one of the reasons the product exists. Domicile is resolved per instrument and drives the withholding estimate: a US-domiciled fund is treated under the US rate that applies to your tax residence, an Irish-domiciled UCITS under the 15% treaty rate the fund itself pays on the US dividends inside it. You can compare a fund you hold against its counterpart in the other structure, on your own position sizes.

Method and assumptions: cross-border dividend withholding methodology.

How does BorderFolio separate contributions from market returns?

Every purchase is stored as a contribution with its date, quantity, price and commission, so the capital you added is summed independently of price movement. Market movement is measured on its own, by revaluing the positions you hold over the period, rather than taken as whatever contributions fail to explain — and dividends, broker fees and the tax withheld at source each get their own line. The Performance page shows the whole decomposition for a period you choose, and the parts have to add up to the portfolio value exactly; when they don't, nothing is shown rather than a breakdown with the difference hidden in it. Monthly snapshots keep the same split per month instead of collapsing everything into one lifetime figure.

Formula and limits: true return methodology.

What happens when I upload overlapping statements?

Overlapping periods are expected — most people export a fresh statement without trimming it. Transactions already imported are matched and reported as duplicates in the review screen instead of being added a second time, and a statement whose period ends earlier than the last one applied does not silently overwrite newer position quantities.

How are duplicate transactions handled?

Extracted transactions are matched against what the portfolio already holds for the same period. Matches are listed as skipped duplicates in the review, with counts shown before you confirm. Re-uploading the same file therefore adds nothing.

Are broker credentials required?

No. A portfolio can always be built from the statement files you upload and the data you enter, with no credential of any kind. The one connection that exists — Freedom24, via read-only API keys you generate yourself — is optional, and nothing in the product can place trades or move money either way. See security & data handling for how keys and uploaded files are stored.

Does BorderFolio provide financial or tax advice?

No. Every number is an informational estimate computed from your own portfolio data and the tax residence you configure. BorderFolio is not a broker, investment adviser or tax adviser. Estimates show their assumptions so you can check them, and you should confirm anything material with a qualified adviser in your jurisdiction. See the investment & tax disclaimer.

Which exchanges and securities are supported?

Listed equities, ETFs and funds with a public quote receive live market data automatically. A listed instrument whose quote is missing or stale can still be tracked with manually maintained values, so an illiquid holding never blocks the rest of the portfolio.

Live quotes cover 67 exchanges across 49 countries and territories in 36 quote currencies — the US, Canada and Latin America, the UK, Ireland and continental Europe including the Nordics and Baltics, Asia-Pacific from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh, and Tel Aviv, Tadawul, Qatar, Johannesburg and Cairo. The portfolio itself can be reported in any of 19 currencies. Every venue, with its MIC and quote currency, is listed on the coverage page.

Individual bonds, notes and treasuries are not supported yet. Statement import skips them and names them among the rows it did not import, rather than reading a bond as if it were shares — their prices are quoted per 100 of face value and they pay coupons, not dividends, so both the holding and the money put in would come out wrong. Supporting them properly means a separate instrument reference, a bond price source and interest treated as interest; it is on the roadmap. Bond funds — an ETF, ETN or mutual fund with its own ticker — are supported today and behave like any other fund.

How are broker fees handled?

A commission stated on a statement line is attached to that purchase, so the contributed amount reflects what the trade actually cost and the per-share price stays honest. Costs that never appear on a statement — a fund's expense ratio, an FX spread — are not estimated and are not silently added.

Can I export or delete my portfolio data?

Contribution history can be exported to CSV on Pro. Holdings, contributions and whole portfolios can be edited or removed in the app at any time. The entire account is deleted by you, in the app, under Profile & Settings → Security → Danger zone: it erases the profile, every portfolio and the uploaded statement files, cancels an active subscription, and is irreversible. What deletion leaves behind, and everything else about how an uploaded statement is handled, is set out on the security & data handling page.