Using the Trac App
Your data
Overview#
Getting information into and out of Trac, and the underlying model it is stored in: adding data by hand, importing and exporting files, activities, and the chart of accounts. It starts with Connections — linking a bank, brokerage or Google account so the data arrives on its own instead of being entered or imported. It also covers Files — the document vault where your statements, tax forms and agreements are filed and connected to the holdings, people and activities they belong to — and Data Operations, the admin screen that shows what is outstanding across the whole portfolio and where you work through it. From there, Reconciling an account walks the screen where you check one account against its statement, period by period.
Adding Your Data
When you first start using Trac, your main job is getting your information into the app: the things you own (holdings), the money movements on them (activities), the people and companies you work with (contacts), and the people or entities that hold your assets (owners). Once that data is in, everything else — your reports, your net-worth view, and the Explorer — is built from it. This guide walks through each of those flows step by step.
Connections
A connection links a Trac portfolio to an outside account — a bank or brokerage login through Plaid, or a Google account for Drive — so the data keeps arriving on its own instead of being typed in or imported from a file. Once an institution is connected, its accounts, balances, positions and transactions flow into the portfolio and turn up as holdings, activities to review and prices. This guide covers where connections live, how to link an institution, what happens after linking, how to sync one by hand, how to repair one that has stopped working, and how to remove one.
Importing data
When you have a lot of data to add at once — a spreadsheet of holdings, a year of activity, a price history — you don’t have to type it in record by record. Trac’s batch import reads a spreadsheet, checks it against the fields it expects, lets you fix anything that doesn’t line up, and then creates (or updates) all the rows in one go. This guide walks through importing data from a spreadsheet. To attach documents (PDFs, statements, images) to a holding instead, see Adding Your Data, which covers individual and batch file uploads.
Exporting data
Trac lets you take your data back out — to share it, archive it, or work with it in a spreadsheet. There are two ways to export, depending on what you want: One-click exports from Tools — ready-made exports of your activities, portfolio items, or owners. Exports from the Explorer — export exactly the table you’ve built, with the filters, columns, and sort order you’ve set, as CSV or PDF. Both are admin features.
Activities
Trac records your money movements as activities. An activity is an accounting-aware way to capture a buy, sell, dividend, transfer, or other money movement — it tracks not just the amount, but where the money came from and went, and what happened to the individual lots of shares you own. This guide walks through what you’ll see on a holding and how to do the most common things: add an activity, choose the level of detail you enter it at, and review your lots and gains.
Chart of Accounts
Your chart of accounts is the list of accounts Trac uses to organize the money side of your portfolio — the buckets that activity is recorded against so your books stay balanced and your reports add up. Every activity posts to these accounts, so a well-organized chart of accounts is what makes the general ledger and the balance-sheet / income-statement views accurate. This guide explains how to reach the chart-of-accounts screen, how it’s organized, and how to add, edit, and remove accounts and books.
Files
Files is where your documents live — statements, capital calls, tax forms, legal agreements, wires, valuations, and anything else you want to keep beside the holdings and people they belong to. It’s a document vault: you upload a document once, file it in one place, and then point it at as many holdings, owners, contacts or activities as it actually relates to. This guide walks through uploading documents, organizing them with folders and tags, finding one again, reading it, and connecting it to the rest of your portfolio.
Data Operations
Data Operations is the screen that answers two questions about a whole portfolio at once: is this data right, and what is still outstanding? It gathers the work that would otherwise be scattered across individual holdings — activities waiting to be confirmed, postings that never landed on a real account, open data issues, and accounts that are behind on their statements — and puts it all behind one row of tabs.
Reconciling an account
Reconciling is how you prove Trac agrees with the outside world. You take one account, one stretch of time and the statement that covers it, and you check three things: the cash ties, the positions tie, and every movement on the statement has a matching entry in Trac. When all of that clears, you complete the period — and from then on Trac treats those numbers as settled. This guide walks the screen you land on when you pick an account from the Reconcile tab of Data Operations: what it shows, the order to work it in, and what has to be true before a period can be marked complete.