Broker guides

Scalable Capital export guide: two products, two histories

Scalable Capital offers two products behind one login: a broker where you place your own orders, and a managed service where a portfolio is run for you. The two keep separate records. The file that describes one of them says nothing about the other, and that is where most export confusion starts.

This guide covers how to tell which product your money sits in, where the export lives on the web platform, what the file can answer that the screen does not, and what to check before you trust the numbers.

How to get your history out of Scalable Capital

Work out first which product your money sits in: self-directed brokerage, a managed portfolio, or both.
Export from the web platform rather than the phone if you have the choice. Browser interfaces are usually where the reporting lives.
Look for a transactions or account history view with a download option, and prefer CSV or Excel over PDF.
Set the range to your complete history, and export both products separately if you use both.
Upload the file or files to BullBenchmark. Several files from one broker merge into one history.

The exact menu names move between releases, so this guide describes what to look for rather than a click path.

Two products, two ledgers

In the self-directed broker you decide what to buy, when, and in what size. Your history is a list of your own orders, your savings plan executions, dividends received, fees, and money moving in and out. That is a normal broker history.

A managed portfolio is different in a way that matters for tracking. You deposit money, the strategy decides what to hold, and the rebalancing happens without you. Your history therefore contains transactions you never ordered, sometimes many of them. Read row by row, that file looks like the history of an active trader.

The file can answer two questions: what did the strategy do with the money, and what did the money do. Only the second one is your return.

If you hold both products, you need both exports. You keep them apart when you interpret them and together when you total them up. A tracker that merges several files into one portfolio, with the source of each row preserved, does both at once, which is hard to do reliably with two spreadsheets.

Where the export lives

Scalable Capital runs a full web platform next to the app, and browser interfaces are usually where the reporting and document functions are most complete. Log in there and look for the account or portfolio view that lists transactions, and for a download or export control near it.

Expect at least periodic statements and yearly tax documents as PDFs. A machine-readable transaction export, where offered, is the file you want.

The securities themselves may be held at a partner bank rather than at Scalable Capital, which is normal in German brokerage and shows up in the naming of your documents. It changes nothing about your bookkeeping. It does explain why a statement may carry a bank's name you did not expect.

Take the full period. An export that begins at the start of the current year turns everything you bought earlier into a position with no origin. The cost basis of a holding you have owned for four years cannot be recovered from a one-year file.

If the range is capped, export year by year and keep the files together. Merging them is the tracker's job.

What the file can answer

The file can answer three questions that the platform's own screen does not.

What is your time-weighted return? That is the number that can fairly be laid next to an index, because it removes the effect of when you deposited. A managed portfolio in particular tends to be judged on its chart, and that chart mostly follows your contributions.

How does it compare with an index tracker? The index's own chart assumes a single lump sum on day one. A fair comparison uses a simulated index portfolio that received your deposits on the same dates, which separates the decisions from the timing. The method is described in how to check whether you are beating the S&P 500.

What did it cost? Fees, spreads, currency conversion and the tax withheld at source all sit in the same file. They can be added up once a year from that one file.

Savings plans, fractions and rebalancing

Three details in the file confuse many people the first time they read their own export.

Savings plan executions are individual purchases, so a two-year plan is two dozen rows per fund. That is correct, and those dated rows are what make a cash-flow replay possible.

Fractional shares are normal. Positions like 3.7182 shares appear in the file and must keep all their decimals in whatever you do next. A spreadsheet that rounds them to two decimals creates gains and losses that never happened.

Rebalancing in a managed portfolio produces bursts of small buys and sells, each one realizing a small gain or loss. Per transaction those numbers say little. Per position over the year they are informative. The difference between a result that is banked and one that is on paper is covered in realized vs unrealized gains.

What to check before you trust the numbers

Does the file start before your first transaction in that product?
If you exported per year, do consecutive files leave no gap in dates?
Do buys minus sells reproduce today's positions, fractions included?
Are dividends present, with the amounts withheld from them?
Have you exported the second product, if you have one?

Tax entries appear as money leaving your cash balance, including in a year in which you sold nothing. They are cash flows, not investment losses. A tracker that books them as a loss understates what your holdings did. This page describes what is in the file and is not tax advice.

From file to answer

BullBenchmark rebuilds your complete history from the export. It shows the time-weighted return, dividends received and expected, realized and unrealized results kept apart, and your own deposits replayed into the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 in your own currency. No login to your broker is required, and none is ever asked for.

The live demo shows the same screens with a sample portfolio, if you would rather look first.

BullBenchmark reads the transaction export from your broker and shows your return next to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100, fed with the same deposits on the same dates, in your own currency. The first two weeks are free and no card is needed.