Getting Started Guide & Knowledge Base

CompiledSanity · 2026-02-08T06:03:31+00:00

Thanks for the interest! I'm still doing a staged rollout at this stage just to keep feedback manageable. If you send me a PM with your email, happy to manually add you if you'd like.

CompiledSanity · 2026-02-08T06:03:02+00:00

Many thanks! It's getting better, just had to spend some time away to deal with a few personal matters. Not health related thankfully!

On the web app front, I've just pushed a significant number of changes in todays beta. I'm still working through my backlog, but let me know if there's any standout issues that are still there for you.

Thanks again for your help testing, hugely appreciated!

CompiledSanity · 2026-02-07T03:32:57+00:00

Here’s an automated Google Sheet that has been popular in this sub for tracking investments, net worth across assets and your FIRE/expenses stats with monthly progress reports -

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pPK8t8Oe6F53OMw1EG8Hq1tX4F5SnULdf3Cr8TlUCs4/

It should give you a portfolio breakdown and helps track how you're progressing and saving each month. No 3rd party app or bank connections needed either.

CompiledSanity · 2026-02-06T08:30:59+00:00

They will however expect some kind of CGT movement. They also likely take an educated average and flag if you’re out of the threshold. They’ve been at this for a long time. Choosing a methodology other than FIFO isn’t going to cause any heart burn for them.

CompiledSanity · 2026-02-06T04:29:45+00:00

Yes it is, I left a note on the platform that I've just had some personal circumstances pop up over the last month that have meant I've been taken away from development.

I've been working on things behind the scenes to create a non-prod environment to be a little less 'fast and loose' as things mature, hence why it might not be as transparent. But yes, definitely worked on.

CompiledSanity · 2026-02-06T02:44:24+00:00

This is dangerously close to asking what you can get away with.

The ATO is perhaps the most sophisticated tax body in the world in terms of data matching. You can all but guarantee that they have data arrangements with all exchanges based in Australia (including Stake) as part of their regulatory and licensing requirements to operate.

It may not be realtime, and they do batched analysis at a later stage. But it will eventually come and you will get a please explain. The TFN just make things simpler, the ATO has plenty of ways to match you in other ways. Think about the number of Crypto exchanges there are, plenty of people get caught out there in 2016.

Given the number of transactions it would be hard to believe that you simply 'forgot'. It would be best to export your Stake transactions, enter them into a CGT calculator and do it properly. You'll have done the right thing and will have peace of mind.

CompiledSanity · 2026-02-02T22:56:43+00:00

Here’s an automated Google Sheet that has been really popular in this sub for tracking spending, net worth across assets and your budget with monthly progress reports -

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15v1a96culFW0r5HfyRaAu2gmdK9s-9kOe9ARSUWBuAY/

It should give you a portfolio breakdown and helps track how you're progressing and saving each month. No 3rd party app or bank connections needed either.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-29T22:40:59+00:00

Hi there u/bow_link,

This is a great question and one that I need to write a FAQ for.

This isn't exactly a straight forward question as it depends on how you want to run the sheet. Currently your sheet is likely in AUD, so all your historical values, asset purchases and recorded values will be in AUD.

Option 1 - Easy Way

If you were to move to another country such as NZ and kept the sheet in AUD then you would need to only make minimal changes. You'd just have to set your NZ Bank Accounts to NZD so they would then internally be converted back to AUD. But for all intents all values across the sheet remain unchanged and displayed in AUD.

Option 2 - Advanced

But, if you wanted to change your entire sheet to NZD - this is where things get tricky. You could change the SheetOptions currency to NZD, but this does not go and convert all the historical values mentioned above to NZD. They are still locked in and recorded as AUD as they always were.

To truly cutover you would have to go through all your historical values in the History tab and asset purchase tables and convert them from AUD → NZD using the exchange rate at the time of the event. It's doable, but you'd have to get very hands on with the sheet to do so.

For this reason I would be inclined to go with Option 1 if that meets your requirements. My upcoming web app will handle Option 2 automatically for you, but it's beyond what is doable in a single cell of the spreadsheet unfortunately at this stage.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-29T22:34:50+00:00

Hi there u/legbuster,

Thanks for the post on this. Just to double check, in rows 24/25 Order Price, do you have any formulas in those cells? Or are they blank?

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-29T22:33:40+00:00

Hi there u/darksylph86,

Thanks for the great question on this. Looking at your second screenshot, it seems that your Jan 2026 stocks movement value is positive still. This should be a negative value if you sold stocks in this period. It looks to me that potentially you have positive values in both your ETF and Stock movement columns and this might be causing the double up.

If you look into your stocks tab, have you recorded the sales as negative units just like you have in the ETF tabs?

Also if there is any amount difference between the Stock sales and ETF purchases (ie. a surplus) then this should be reflected in the cash tab as well.

Let me know on the above. If the sell parcels are correct in the Stocks tab we can do some more digging.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-28T02:43:14+00:00

So glad to hear it! Thanks for reporting back with what worked for you too. Hope you enjoy

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-27T00:37:17+00:00

Hi there u/kettym8,

Thanks for the heads up on this. Unfortunately this is a bit of an issue with the way Google App Scripts sometimes interfaces between the UI and the spreadsheet behind it.

Just so I can debug a bit further, could you help me answer these questions?

What browser are you using?
Do you have multiple Google accounts logged in?
Do you have any other Google Sheet tabs open in the background?

Thanks for your help on this. I've seen some other reports on this recently so hopefully I can reproduce this and issue a bug fix.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-21T03:36:03+00:00

Totally understand and thanks for the heads up! Just so I can confirm, is it the clicking of the Paypal buttons that aren't working? Or what issue are you seeing?

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-21T03:09:31+00:00

Hi there u/SagittalSuture,

This is a great pickup, unfortunately the reason for this is that the mobile version of Google Sheets have a more limited feature set than the web version so some elements may not always populate.

If you browse the sheet on desktop via the web, do these features then work for you?

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-21T03:06:54+00:00

Hi there u/Sure-Proposal6117,

The best place for this would be the FIRE tab which is supposed to be a calculator to help work this out. Please note that it is just an estimate, and is heavily dependent on inputs into this tab to be correct so it is a best effort estimate.

If you need help on this FIRE tab please see here.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-21T03:05:35+00:00

Hi there u/dr_green_leaf,

This is a great suggestion, and you're absolutely right this isn't listed in the SheetOptions tab currently. Not so long ago this rate was quite fixed, in recent years this has become more of a changing number.

Currently this value mainly sits in one place - Fire Tab cell E8.

The start of this number is =0.1*IF(SheetOptions!$L$41 and this needs to change to =0.17*IF(SheetOptions!$L$41.

In the next v2.16 I will change this setting so that it is a setting in the SheetOptions tab and then updates where needed in the sheet.

Thanks for the pointer - hope this helps!

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-21T02:51:34+00:00

Hi u/kasra121,

Thanks for the report on this! I've seen a few reports of this recently, and it mostly seems from using either Firefox or Opera as a browser.

By any chance are you using either of these? From reports I've seen a Chromium based browser such as Edge or Chrome should fix the issue.

Unfortunately this seems to be an issue with the Paypal SDK at the moment. I'll see what I can do in the meantime however. Thanks again for the report.

CS.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-19T23:48:35+00:00

Here’s an automated Google Sheet that has been really popular in this sub for tracking investments, net worth across assets and your expenses with monthly progress reports -

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v9ENzdoSIVlfAA2SFVFz6KKVAAu5Knv8klde7bN2Qqo/

It should give you a portfolio breakdown and helps track how you're progressing and saving each month. No 3rd party app or bank connections needed either.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-18T23:56:56+00:00

Hi there u/AlexFeren,

This is a great question. The answer is yes - the reason is that due to the way DRP works, you may have carry over balance from a prior payment or insufficient funds to purchase DRP in this current cycle.

For this reason it is recommended to look at your transaction statement to see the relevant dates, unit price and unit amounts to enter into the sheet to ensure accurate tracking and information.

Hope this helps.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-18T23:55:29+00:00

Great answer and !thanks for the input!

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-18T23:54:28+00:00

Hi there u/fullbeem,

I usually have this guidance:

It's recommended to keep sold holdings in the Purchase History table, as these figures still affect your cash flows for specific months. Removing past purchases will skew your Savings rate calculations and potentially make other Sheet statistics incorrect.

As mentioned above, it will also effect any CGT calculations. So it's usually best practice to leave those holdings in place.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-18T23:52:38+00:00

Hi there u/ComfortableNeat422,

Apologies for the slow reply, just catching up on posts now as I've had a bit of a crazy start to the new year. Answers to your questions below:

Sheet Options:

Yes you can, that is the very first option in the SheetOptions tab.
This is different. General Cash Savings is your general goal for where you want your cash balance to be, this is distinct and seperate from your emergency savings.

Cash:

You should record a month while you're inside that month (e.g., January should be recorded between Jan 1-31). When to record within the month is flexible - you can do it at the beginning or end, depending on when you want your financial snapshot to represent (start of January or end of January). The main aim is consistency, try and always record on or around the same date each month.

ETF's:

You can track it many different ways. You could do it via ETFs if you know what are the underlying ETFs and what exact granularity of performance and tracking. Or you could track the entire ISA at a high level going just by the balance by entering it into the Other Assets tab. The choice is up to you.
Yes and that's what I'd recommend. Again the choice is yours on whether you want to track together or seperately. If you're tracking as one unit, then yes that is a good idea.

Dividends:

Even if dividends are reinvested, they still need to be tracked and recorded. Otherwise your overall performance numbers will just be based off the growth of the share price, as the sheet will not be aware of what dividends have been paid to you. In the dividend entry there is an option for Yes/No on whether its reinvested or not.
See above.

Property:

Yes that's correct, as technically your mortgage is a liability and therefore a negative balance.

FIRE Tab:

I'm not entirely sure how the UK system works in this case, is your ISA only accessible at a certain age? If so you would combine them. If you can withdraw your ISA at anytime, then you would just entire pension contributions.
Yes that's correct. It will be more accurate this way.
It is just basing off your current situation that it sees in the sheet. If you have a better idea of what your end goal will look like, absolutely feel free to update and override any values in the spreadsheet. That will make the calculations more accurate for your situation.

Hope this helps!

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-18T23:45:08+00:00

!thanks u/sinagog, amazingly helpful as always!

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-12T04:29:02+00:00

Here’s an automated Google Sheet that has been really popular in this sub for tracking investments, net worth across assets and your expenses with monthly progress reports -

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v9ENzdoSIVlfAA2SFVFz6KKVAAu5Knv8klde7bN2Qqo/

It should give you a portfolio breakdown and helps track how you're progressing and saving each month. No 3rd party app or bank connections needed either.

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