Manage investments and registered plans

Positions and concentration

Record what each investment account holds, security by security, and see how concentrated those holdings are.

Last updated 2026-09-07

Balance snapshots answer what an investment account was worth. Positions answer what is inside it — 420 units of one ETF, 12 shares of an employer stock. Recording positions lets the page state plainly how much of your holdings sit in any one security.

This is description, not advice. TallyFolio reports what you recorded and stops there: it never scores a portfolio, compares it to a benchmark, or suggests buying, selling, or rebalancing anything.

Recording your holdings

  1. Export a positions or holdings CSV from your broker. Most brokers offer one alongside the transaction export; a PDF statement will not work.
  2. Open Holdings, then Positions, then Import positions. Choose the investment account, the date the file describes, and the currency to assume when the file omits one.
  3. Match the columns. Symbol and quantity are required. Market value, currency, exchange, ISIN, CUSIP, and security type are optional and each one improves how holdings are identified and valued.
  4. Review the holdings, deselect anything you do not want, and save.

Each import replaces one account and date

A positions file is a complete statement of one account on one date, not a list of changes. Importing therefore replaces everything previously recorded for that account and that date. This is what lets a sold holding disappear: it is simply absent from the newer file, and merging could never express that.

Importing a different date leaves earlier dates untouched, so your snapshots build a history. The Positions page always shows the newest snapshot for each account, and never mixes dates together.

How holdings are identified

Two rows describe the same holding when they share an ISIN, or when they share a symbol and exchange. Nothing else is guessed, because merging two different securities would quietly corrupt every figure that follows.

  • An ISIN is checked against its own check digit. One that fails is ignored rather than trusted.
  • When one row in a file carries an ISIN and another with the same symbol does not, the missing one is filled in from its twin.
  • If the same holding appears in several rows — multiple lots, or sub-accounts — the rows are combined and their quantities added. If those rows disagree about currency, the market value is left unknown instead of summing amounts that cannot be added.

What the concentration figures mean

Every percentage is a share of the holdings that could actually be valued and converted to your base currency. A holding with no market value contributes its quantity but no value, and a holding in a currency with no exchange rate is excluded from the total rather than counted at par — TallyFolio never assumes one-to-one.

Whenever either happens, the page says so directly under the figures, including how many holdings the numbers speak for. Add the missing exchange rate in Settings to bring an excluded currency into the total.

These figures cover directly held securities only. What a fund holds inside itself is not counted, so a single ETF counts once, as one holding, whatever it owns internally.

Common mistakes

  • Uploading a PDF statement. Positions import reads a CSV; most brokers offer a positions or holdings export alongside the transaction one.
  • Importing today's file under yesterday's date, or the reverse. The date you choose is the date the holdings are recorded against, and re-importing the same date replaces it.
  • Expecting a partial file to top up an existing date. It will not: the newer file becomes the whole snapshot for that account and date.
  • Reading a percentage without the note beneath it. When holdings are unvalued or a currency has no rate, the figures cover less than the whole portfolio and the page says by how much.

FAQ

Do positions change my contribution room or my reports?
No. Positions are a record of what an account holds. They never touch contribution room, spending, income, budgets, cash flow, or the forecast, and they are not transactions.
Is my positions file stored anywhere?
No. The file is read in memory and discarded. Only the holdings you confirm on the review step are saved.
Why is a holding missing from the concentration list?
Either it carried no market value in the file, or its currency has no exchange rate to your base currency. Both cases are counted and explained beneath the figures, and neither is silently treated as zero.
Can TallyFolio tell me if I am too concentrated?
No. It reports the share each holding represents and leaves the judgement to you. TallyFolio does not give investment advice.

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