What Makes This Actual Bookkeeping
Most free trackers ask what you own and what you owe, then call it done. Real bookkeeping is built on one rule that never bends: every entry has a debit and a credit, and they must always be equal. That single constraint is what makes a trial balance provable instead of just plausible — the "Books Status" badge above isn't decoration, it's the actual mathematical proof that nothing in your ledger is unaccounted for.
Chart of Accounts
Five account types — Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue, Expense — each with a formal normal balance, exactly like a real general ledger.
Trial Balance
Total debits across every account must equal total credits. If they don't, your books are wrong — and you'd know immediately, not months later.
Investment Cost Basis
Average cost basis (ACB) tracking per holding — the method the CRA requires — with realized and unrealized gains calculated automatically.
Multi-Currency
Foreign-currency accounts translate using dated exchange rates, with FX gain or loss reported separately from real investment performance.
Quick Entry vs. Advanced Journal Entry
Quick Entry still works exactly like a simple tracker — pick Income, Expense, or Transfer, fill in the blanks. Behind the scenes, it's generating a fully balanced double-entry journal entry for you, so you get the speed of a simple app with the rigor of real books.
Advanced Journal Entry is there for the transactions Quick Entry can't represent honestly — a mortgage payment that's part principal, part interest, and part escrow in one cheque; a paycheque with gross pay, tax withholding, and a 401(k) deduction all at once. Add as many lines as the transaction actually has, and the entry won't post until the debits and credits match.
Why the Trial Balance Matters More Than It Sounds
A trial balance is the single check that separates bookkeeping from a spreadsheet of numbers that happen to look reasonable. Because every journal entry here is validated before it's ever saved — debits must equal credits, full stop — the trial balance is guaranteed to balance by construction. That's not a coincidence; it's the entire point of double-entry. If you ever see it flagged as unbalanced, something in the data was corrupted or imported incorrectly, and you'll know to go find it before it quietly throws off every report downstream.
Investment Gains, Done Properly
Selling part of a position you built up over several purchases raises a real question: which shares did you actually sell, and what did they cost? This tracker uses average cost basis — blending every purchase into one running cost per share — which is both simpler to reason about than FIFO lot-matching and the method Canada's CRA specifically requires for identical properties. Sell some shares and the realized gain posts automatically to a Realized Capital Gains account, ready for your income statement and tax reporting.