Import guides / Vanguard
Vanguard's export covers every account you hold with them in one pass, which is convenient — but it means the file mixes your IRA with your taxable brokerage account. Choose the accounts deliberately at download time, or split the file afterwards, so each one lands where it belongs.
Export your transaction history
Start here rather than with the positions file. A list of holdings tells FolioBright what you own today; the transaction history tells it what you paid and when, which is what real cost basis, time-weighted return and money-weighted return are built from.
- Sign in at investor.vanguard.com.
- Go to My Accounts, then Transaction history.
- Click Download at the top right.
- Choose a spreadsheet-compatible CSV file as the format.
- Set the date range as far back as it will go.
- Select which accounts to include — pick one at a time if you want them separate in FolioBright.
- Click Download.
Export your current positions
Optional, and useful mainly as a check: import the transactions first, then compare the share counts FolioBright shows against this file to confirm nothing was missed.
- From My Accounts, open Balances & holdings.
- Use the download or export option on that page.
- For per-lot cost basis, look under Cost basis — Vanguard exposes unrealised gain/loss by lot separately from the holdings view.
What FolioBright reads
The importer matches your header row automatically, so normally you do not have to think about this. These are the columns it looks for in a Vanguard export.
| Column in your export | What FolioBright does with it |
|---|---|
Trade Date | when the transaction happened, not when it settled |
Transaction Type | buy, sell, dividend, reinvestment, capital gain distribution |
Symbol | the fund or ETF ticker |
Shares | share count, often to three or four decimal places on fund purchases |
Share Price | NAV or execution price |
Principal Amount | the cash value of the transaction |
Things it handles for you
Fractional shares are kept exactly. Fund reinvestments run to several decimal places, and rounding them is how a portfolio ends up a few hundred dollars off. FolioBright keeps the precision Vanguard gives it.
Capital gain distributions are treated as income rather than as a purchase you made, so your contribution totals stay honest and the distribution still counts toward return.
Automatic reinvestment is booked as the two events it really is: income received, then shares bought. That is what lets FolioBright show you both a dividend history and a rising cost basis for the same fund.
Multiple accounts in one file are fine — import the file into whichever account it belongs to and leave the rest, or download once per account.
Bringing it into FolioBright
- Open FolioBright and choose the account the file belongs to, or create one with Add account.
- Click Import transactions and drop the CSV in.
- Check the column mapping. FolioBright reads the header row and fills it in for you; the preset for this broker is below if you ever need to set it by hand.
- Review the preview. Anything it could not read is listed separately rather than imported quietly.
- Import. Prices, returns and allocation update as soon as it lands.
Other brokerages
Nothing to install
FolioBright reads the file in your browser and stores the result in your own account. There is no brokerage login to hand over, no read-only credential, and no third-party aggregator sitting between you and your holdings.