6 reasons why accountants love Sharesight's professional plan

Sharesight’s tailored edition for financial professionals, Sharesight's professional plan, is loved by accounting firms of all sizes – from solo practices to the "Big Four." From Bay Financial Partners, to Growthwise, to PwC, these firms have embraced Sharesight’s powerful stock market data aggregation tools and comprehensive tax reports, which save them hours of manual “portfolio admin” and allow them to focus on growing their business.

Here are 6 reasons why accountants love Sharesight's professional plan:

1 – Effortless setup

Does the excitement of signing a new client quickly get overshadowed by the dread of portfolio reconstruction? Whether you’re looking to track opening balances or history going back 20 years, setting up a Sharesight portfolio is incredibly straightforward.

That’s because from day one, Sharesight's partners work with a dedicated account manager who provides one-on-one training and assists with portfolio setup. If your client only has a few shares, we’ll show you how to manually upload them in just a few clicks. Otherwise you may sync the data from their online broker, or import it via spreadsheet (csv). Setting up client portfolios in minutes instead of hours or days allows you to attract new clients, or claim back some hours in your day.

2 – Automatic portfolio admin

A portfolio is an ever-changing entity, which updates throughout the day. So in order to stay ahead of portfolio admin (and minimise any surprises at tax time), it’s crucial to track the market, as well as a client’s transactions as they occur.

Traditionally, accounting firms have had to purchase expensive databases in order to access historical share prices, dividends, and corporate actions data. Beyond the hassle of software downloads, updates and licenses, the main issue with this model is that the data quickly goes stale. In other words, the only time the data is current is on the day the work is done. The actual portfolio moves on, the spreadsheet does not.

To fill the gaps, accounting firms are left badgering clients for this data. This paper-chase is not only time-consuming but annoying for both the accountant and client. Think shoe boxes overflowing with contract notes/trade confirmations and dividend statements. It’s not pretty.

Sharesight's professional plan solves these problems by automatically tracking share prices, currency fluctuations, and corporate actions such as dividends, DRPs and share splits like Apple’s below.

And as a bonus, if your clients trade with one of our 170+ supported brokers, their trades can be automatically sent to Sharesight, so their portfolios are always up-to-date with their latest trades.

3 – Comprehensive tax reporting

With an investor’s entire investment portfolio in one place, and up-to-date, Sharesight's professional plan provides accountants with everything they need for tax preparation. We take it one step further by providing comprehensive tax reports that can be accessed in one click:

• All Trades Report: View your client’s complete trading history

• Historical Cost Report: View opening & closing balances at cost price

• Sold Securities Report: View the price on shares sold

• Taxable Income Report: See all dividend & interest payments received

• Capital Gains Tax Report (Australia & Canada)

• Unrealised CGT Report (Australia)

• Foreign Investment Fund / FIF Report (New Zealand)

• Traders Tax Report: For NZ investors classified as ‘traders’ by the IRD

By having everything you need in one place to prepare and file tax returns, tasks that normally took hours or even days can now be done in minutes, in just a few clicks. So rather than spending copious amounts of time looking back over the year’s activities and preparing tax returns, you can spend your time having forward-looking tax discussions instead – and not just at tax time, but throughout the year.

4 – Secure & flexible account sharing options with clients

Rather than passing spreadsheets back and forth, Sharesight Pro allows you to grant access to staff and clients according to the level of access they require: read, read/write, or admin.

The degree to which an accountant involves clients is up to each firm, and depends on the type of client. If you have clients who are hands-on investors, you can provide them with read/write access from the get-go so they can import their portfolio from their online broker. This allows them to dictate how much trading history is added to Sharesight, and lets them manage the portfolio from an investing standpoint. On the other hand, if your client only holds a few shares and relies on your expertise, you may decide to just generate tax-time reports without sharing access at all.

For some accountants, sharing portfolio access with clients takes some getting used to. Apart from portfolio setup, there’s very little ongoing administration work to be done. While this may jeopardise portfolio admin fees, we argue that it strengthens the relationship long-term by allowing you to focus on more rewarding, pro-active activities. A strategic tax planning discussion, for example, is a lot more valuable than a tax retrospective. The beauty of the cloud ecosystem is that it relies on client engagement to really hum. We land on the side of an informed client being a happy client.

5 – Seamless Xero integration

We have an award-winning integration with Xero. So if your accounting firm uses the leading cloud accounting system, you’re in luck. That’s because when you synchronise a Sharesight portfolio to Xero, details of share purchases, sales, and dividends flow into Xero automatically, and in real-time. This allows you to easily reconcile portfolio data against bank statements – at a time that is convenient for you.

Furthermore, Sharesight can pull-in bank account balances, term deposits and cash investments from Xero, so you can view complete financial positions directly within Sharesight portfolios.

6 – Cost effective

Whether you need to track 5 portfolios or 500, Sharesight Pro partners only pay $12 per portfolio, per month. There are no hidden fees, no extras that you have to pay for and no contracts. The price remains the same – no matter the portfolio value. And the more portfolios you set up, the more affordable it gets.

Trial Sharesight Pro today and see what your clients are missing

If you’re an accountant looking for an investment tracking platform that both you and your clients will love, there has never been a better time to trial Sharesight Pro, and enjoy:

• The ability to aggregate – Track any combination of brokers or managed funds and over 36 worldwide exchanges.

• Automated portfolio admin – Automatically track new trades and dividend income (including DRPs).

• Powerful performance reporting – Access Sharesight’s performance reports at your fingertips instead of waiting for a third party.

• Advanced tax reporting – Taxable Income, Capital Gains Tax and Unrealised CGT.

• Direct portfolio sharing with clients

Put Sharesight Pro to the test with a free 30-day no-risk trial – there are no billing details or credit card required and you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time.

To get started, sign up today and a Sharesight Account Manager will be in touch to help you get started.

FURTHER READING

• 7 reasons why Sharesight is better than a spreadsheet

• Benefits of Sharesight Pro vs WRAP platforms

• 6 of the top 10 accounting firms in Australia use Sharesight