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Open Net Worth Docs

Positions, lots, and cost basis

Open Net Worth tracks your investments at two levels:

  • a holding (or position) — how much of one thing you hold in one account: “100 VTI in my brokerage”, “0.5 BTC on my exchange”;
  • the lots inside it — each separate purchase, with its own date, quantity and cost.

Property, cars and other things without a market price aren’t holdings — track those on the Assets screen. See Assets.

Holdings

A holding’s value is its quantity times the latest price, converted to your base currency. It’s worked out fresh every time you look, so it always reflects the current price. Prices come from Yahoo Finance and CoinGecko; physical gold, silver, platinum and palladium are valued at the spot price. See Prices aren’t updating.

A holding’s quantity always comes from its records — you never type it in. For shares you own, it’s the sum of its lots. For equity grants it comes from the grant: unvested units from the vesting schedule, and vested-but-not-yet-delivered units from the vests waiting for release. To change how much you hold, record what happened — a buy, a sale, a transfer, or a correction to a lot — and the holding follows. Moving a holding to another account moves its lots with it.

Lots: what you actually paid

Every purchase is a lot: an acquired date, a quantity, and a cost basis — what you paid, fees included. Fees are spread evenly across the lot’s units, never dropped. Lots are what let the app show not just what a holding is worth, but how much you’re up or down on each part of it.

If you don’t know what you paid (old shares, a transfer from another broker), leave the unit cost blank. The lot still counts toward your holding, but no gain or loss is shown for it.

Recording a purchase

Click Add on Investments (or Add lot on a holding’s Position tab), then fill in Symbol, Account (or + New account…), Acquired date, Quantity, and either Unit cost or Total spent — enter one and the other is worked out. Kind records how you got it: Buy, Dividend reinvest, Transfer in, Grant, or Opening balance.

Deduct from is optional. Pick a cash account and the purchase is taken from it in the same step. Choose Don’t deduct from an account and only the lot is recorded — your cash balance doesn’t change, and the form tells you so.

The acquired date can’t be in the future — a lot records shares you already hold. If you deduct the cost from an account and the purchase is dated before that account’s starting balance, the form says its balance won’t change: transactions before an account’s starting balance are left out of it (see Accounts).

Full steps: Investments.

Added a holding through Lucius without a purchase date? It’s recorded as an Opening balance lot dated the day you added it — you held it when tracking started, like an account’s starting balance. Your past net-worth history isn’t rewritten, and returns count the holding at its market value that day, so an old purchase price doesn’t show up as a gain this month. When you know the real date, click the lot and set it — or tell Lucius (“I bought that in March 2023”) — and history and the holding period follow.

Selling: which lots are used

A sale has to come out of specific lots, because different purchases cost different amounts. On the holding’s Position tab, click + Record sale, then under Lot selection:

  • FIFO (the default) — sells your oldest lots first (“first in, first out”).
  • Specific lots — you pick which lots and how much from each, for example to sell the ones with the highest cost for tax reasons. The amounts must add up to the sale quantity; if they don’t, the form says “the picked quantities must sum to the sale quantity”.

Deposit proceeds to adds the money to a cash account in the same step, or choose Don’t add to an account. Transferring shares out, gifting or writing off works the same way — choose the Not a sale option.

Editing lots and sales

  • Acquisition lots lists every lot you’ve recorded, oldest first — including ones you’ve sold completely, which stay in the list, greyed out and marked Sold, so your buy history never disappears. The header counts both, for example 1 open · 5 closed. A sold lot has no unrealized gain; its gain is under Realized history.
  • Click any lot to correct its date, quantity, cost, fees or kind — including a lot you’ve sold from. If you deducted its cost from an account, that purchase is corrected to match; changing only the note leaves it alone.
  • Correcting a sold lot keeps every sale exactly as recorded (which lots it used, how many, the price and the cash). Only that lot’s lines on the sale follow: a new date updates their holding period, and a new cost or fees updates the sale’s gain. A sold lot can’t be made smaller than what’s already been sold from it — edit the sale for that.
  • Remove lot is for a lot nothing has been sold from. To remove a sold one, undo the sale first.
  • Click the small arrow on a sale under Realized history to see the lots it used: each lot’s date, quantity, cost, holding period and gain. A sale that used lots with different holding periods shows its term as Mixed.
  • Click a sale under Realized history to edit it. The app undoes the old sale and records the new one in one step, so lots, gains and cash stay in agreement.
  • An older lot whose purchase date was never known shows an empty Acquired date when you edit it. Saving a note or cost leaves the date unknown rather than setting it to today.

Realized and unrealized gains

  • Unrealized gain — what an unsold holding is worth now, minus what you paid. It changes with the price and is worked out each time you look.
  • Realized gain — locked in when you sell: the proceeds minus the cost basis of exactly the lots that sale used. Only a sale creates one.

Options and equity compensation

Option contracts (covered calls, for example) and equity compensation (RSUs, vesting grants) are tracked too. Both are newer, beta areas — check their figures before relying on them. Unvested shares don’t count toward your net worth until they vest; see Net worth and Equity compensation.