Topic: account tracking profit/loss (Read 97 times)

I had the same problem of not finding a good template for my trades, so I just started doing one myself. It might be a bit more work but if you start out small it's going to be manageable. I am updating the exchange rates twice a week and keep adding any new trades. For me it's mainly a ledger to keep track of all trades. It's not so sophisticated but it does the job.

To track your cryptocurrency trading activities you need to download the trading history on the accounts you traded, and export them into a spreadsheet or any tool you have to keep track of your profits and loss including the transaction fee and withdrawal fee. If you are a regular trader then you need to do immense kind of work which need the assistance from a professional for sure.

When I did my taxes this year the question posed by Turbo Tax was: Have you traded in any Cryptocurrencies.  I clicked yes but did not get any further questions.  That puzzles me.  I am a latecomer starting in 2017. Still, as of 2020 taxes that is three years of history.

Not being an accountant or a tax expert, meaning barely knowledgeable much less an expert, I worry there are things I will neglect to include or calculate wrongly.
Crypto is considered property and I presume the same as stocks/bonds.  That means that each coin, or portion, must be tracked as to purchase and sell costs and date for each.  Purchase is easy, but a sell may cross purchase boundaries.  If so, I presume that for taxes a single sell might have to be treated as N sells, one for each group of purchases at different prices.

Commissions are always reduce my ownership.  Should they be expressed as negative numbers or as positive number but knowing to always subtract.  The reason for asking that is: How should I handle the case when I transfer coins to another exchange.  I did not sell and did not have a profit or loss.  But I need to show in the receiving account that the coins were not zero cost.  For example, I cannot get my bank and Kraken synched up to buy some DOGE so I buy some Litecoin in Coinbase then send some that to Kraken to sell and buy DOGE.

You don't have to be complicated with that. If you want to track your profits/losses, a simple spreadsheet will do.

You can search for any of them on the web and look for the formula's that you needed for you to make it ideal from your need.

What is the best tool to use for tracking crypto transactions?
I found some spread sheets but none of them mentioned the use of multiple exchanges.
When searching for MS Access templates Google ignores the part about Access.  The plus prefix is ignored.  Seems to me that a database is better for this than a spread sheet.
Your thoughts please.