How to Track Your Investment Portfolio With a Simple Spreadsheet
Brokerage apps are great for buying and selling. They’re terrible for seeing the full picture.
Most apps show you today’s balance, maybe a chart of recent performance. But they don’t show you your true cost basis across multiple transfers, your actual dividend yield, your portfolio allocation relative to your targets, or how your net worth has changed over months and years. For that, you need something you control.
What a Portfolio Tracker Should Show You
A good investment tracker goes beyond current value. It should show you the total cost of every position including all purchases over time, unrealized gain or loss in both dollars and percentage, dividend income broken down by holding and by time period, portfolio allocation compared to your target allocation, and performance trends over months and years so you can see whether you’re actually on track.
Most brokerage apps show you pieces of this information scattered across different screens. None of them show you all of it in one place in a format you can customize.
Why a Spreadsheet Beats an App
With a spreadsheet, you own the data completely. There’s no monthly subscription, no data sharing with third parties, no features locked behind a paywall, and no risk that the company pivots or shuts down and takes your tracking history with it.
You can customize every formula, add your own analysis columns, track holdings across multiple accounts, and keep records for as long as you want. When tax season comes, everything is in one place. When you meet with a financial advisor, you can show them exactly where you stand.
What About Dividend Tracking?
For investors building passive income through dividends, tracking isn’t optional — it’s essential. You need to see how much each holding is paying you, when those payments arrive, and how your total dividend income is growing over time. Watching that number climb month over month is one of the most motivating aspects of dividend investing, and it’s nearly invisible in most brokerage apps.
Our Investment Portfolio Tracker
The Everpath Studio Investment Portfolio Tracker is a ready-made Excel spreadsheet that handles all of this. Color-coded input cells make it clear where to enter your data, and everything else auto-calculates: cost basis, current value, gain/loss, dividend yield, allocation percentages, and performance over time.
It’s designed for real people who want clarity on their portfolio without needing to build a spreadsheet from scratch. Enter your holdings, and the tracker does the rest.
Shop the Investment Portfolio Tracker on Etsy — $14.97 →
