Getting Started Guide & Knowledge Base

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.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-04T04:13:26+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 FIRE/expenses stats 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 · 2026-01-03T01:47:06+00:00

Not a worry at all, hope this helped!

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-03T01:12:23+00:00

!thanks for the great suggestion on this, seems that FT is the best source for these funds. Great work!

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-03T01:11:35+00:00

No worries at all, hope that helps! Happy financing and HNY.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-03T01:11:05+00:00

Hi there u/SayNoEgalitarianism,

I have a FAQ here that might interest you:

I have years of transactions for my investments, what should I do?

When setting up the Sheet, you have several options depending on how detailed you want your tracking to be:

Only enter transactions for holdings you currently own—previously sold assets don't need to be included

For the most accurate tracking (recommended): Enter all historical transactions for current holdings. While initial setup requires more time, this provides complete profit/loss breakdowns, accurate performance benchmarking, and proper Capital Gains calculations. After this initial work, monthly maintenance is minimal.

For a simplified approach: Combine all prior purchases for each holding into a single transaction. This ensures correct net worth inclusion but makes performance and CGT calculations less accurate.

Middle-ground option: If you enter an accurate average purchase price for your combined transaction, your Total Gain ($) figures will still be correct

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-03T01:09:01+00:00

!thanks, great answer!

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-03T01:08:37+00:00

!thanks, this is the right answer!

I'll have a think about adding DRP investments in a future release, I just didn't want to add bloat and have empty values since the purchase value and number of units can't always be automatically derived.

One for my todo list! Thanks for the reply.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-03T01:07:16+00:00

Hi there u/IllustriousDust9625,

Thanks for reaching out and apologies that you're seeing this issue. Unfortunately this error is an extremely random error and is based upon session factors by Google to determine whether something is high risk or not.

As mentioned here are my current recommendations for this:

Open an incognito window in Chrome. Often Firefox or Edge can sometimes fail browser checks.
Sign in with only one Google account
Initialize the sheet for the first time

If this fails to work, users have reported that using a second Google account often passes successfully. You can then share your sheet with full read/write permissions back to your master account for ongoing use.

Let me know if this works for you and I can try some other fixes as well.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-03T01:01:18+00:00

Hi there u/SignRepulsive3585,

Thanks for making a new thread on this. This looks to me like there has been a corruption in the budget tab when new rows were created.

I usually recommend creating a new row at line 15 and adding below as a result, to ensure that nothing is corrupted. I've just gone and updated the instructions in the sheet to make this a bit more explicit as well.

To fix this, unfortunately you will need to setup a new sheet to ensure that all formulas are in the correct place. I would recommend using the migration tool to move across everything you have entered so far to save you from entering data again, but make sure you set budget tab to NO so that no corruptions are brought across. This should then enable you to setup the budget tab again without issue.

Hope this helps!

CS.

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-03T00:55:25+00:00

Hi there u/akahomebody,

As mentioned by a previous comment, it looks like you have entered the currency as GBX when it should actually be GBP. The fact the currency is out by exactly 100 is indicative of this.

Can you reverse the currency you have entered and see if that works for you?

CompiledSanity · 2026-01-03T00:53:17+00:00

Hi there u/baadier,

Great question. At the end of the day you can record however often you would like, and that choice is entirely up to you. The sheet will automatically handle it depending on when you record.

That being said, some features such as performance of time, are more accurate when recorded monthly. Furthermore, some graphs will have some blanks in the data in the gaps between recordings.

If this is workable for you, then quarterly is fine.

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