The Top 5 One-stop Solutions for Your Crypto-Portfolio — Accounting and Tax Reports

If you are involved with anything crypto you know that incredibly satisfying feeling of checking CoinMarketCap and seeing that your favorite coins are all in green.

However, you probably also know the burning question of “how much crypto-money do I actually own?”

You, of course, know the approximate value of your combined wallets on certain exchanges and probably estimate the rest. At some point, however, you will need an automated solution, because Excel is only your friend up to a certain point…

Among other things, you will need this information to file your taxes, so today, we are going to check out the top 5 crypto accounting solutions that also give you a great overview of the tax burden of your portfolio.

CoinTracking

The Big Dog

CoinTracking is arguably the most well-known crypto accounting software company in the market. As no one likes to be on too many platforms at once, they are also used by many people as a portfolio tracking tool.

CoinTracking has been featured in anything from the renowned German economic magazine “WirtschaftsWoche” to the American TV channel “CNBC”.

It was founded in 2013 and has thus seen the ups and downs of many investors. Therefore, it has quite a large portfolio of exchanges and wallets, among them some that don’t even exist anymore — the crypto world is a fast-paced and brutal one…

Currently, CoinTracking includes imports from a wide variety of exchanges and wallets, the following screenshot from their website shows just the available exchanges:

Pros and Cons

The big advantage here is the reliability of the tool. Since April 2013, a bit under 400,000 users have signed up and the approach of the tool makes it very simple to get an overview of your portfolio, gains, and relevant tax information.

The free version of the tool allows for 200 trades and is therefore especially interesting for new investors who don’t want to do too much in terms of day-trading or diversification. It also does not include an automatic exchange import via API.

If you are a bit more serious about your trading, you will need to upgrade to a plan of €149/$167 per year (3,500 transactions) or €266/$298 per year (unlimited transactions).

The tax report includes a simple FIFO method (read more about FIFO in this article) and therefore somewhat minimizes the tax burden, though it doesn’t utilize the full scope of possible tax optimization as well as some calculations for the cost basis of your transactions.

Visuals

The dashboard includes a whole bunch of useful and simple metrics that make CoinTracking interesting to use.

Next to the total value of your portfolio, it shows you the current balance overall, the balance per currency as well as many more features.

Availability

Desktop — the browser-based tool is very slick and the UI looks nice — though it has a certain “old analytics”-feel to it.

iOS — The iOS-app has received very good reviews with 4.7 stars in the App store

Android — The Android app has more than 2,800 positive reviews

Overall rating: 4/5 Stars

The current market leader status of CoinTracking is well-deserved. Except for the pricing and the limited tax optimization, the tool has everything we would want in a portfolio/tax report service. With small design updates in the web dashboard and a pricing model that is a bit more competitive, we would give the tool 5/5 Stars.

CoinTracker

What’s in a name? That which we call [CoinTracking] by any other name would smell as sweet.

-Juliet Capulet (probably)

The founders of CoinTracker must have read Shakespeare when they came up with the name for their company. It surely seems like they saw a name they liked (*cough*Cointracking*cough*), took a tiny detour and came up with “CoinTracker” — but don’t be fooled by the name. CoinTracker was founded in 2017 and received fairly little funding (though it was part of the Y-Combinator Class of 2018)

Brief description of tool

According to its website, Cointracker has already connected more than 100k exchanges and wallets via its service. Next to the export of tax-relevant documents, users get an overview of the overall portfolio performance and accurate fee tracking.

Pros and Cons

• All-in-one platform
• Trusted by many
• Automatic synchronization across exchanges
• While the tracking part is free, even the cheapest tax report will set you back about $50. Prices are going up to €899 for 15,000 transactions or more.

Visuals

Availability

• Desktop availability via browser
• iOS: App available with a high rating (at the time of writing, 4.5 stars)
• Android: App available with reasonably high rating (at the time of writing, 4 stars)

Overall rating: 3/5 Stars

The tool has a very nice look and feel to it and has some major force behind it. Overall quite pricey, but a little slicker and tidier than its “bigger brother” CoinTracker… I mean CoinTracking… Now, I’m confused as well…

Accointing

Brief description of tool

Germans might not be the most fun of people. They are not big on the humor. What they seem to be great at however is tax and accounting software. Both CoinTracking (Munich) and Accointing (currently Zug) are founded — at least in part — by Germans. Stereotypes… But I digress…

The guys from Accointing are the New Kids on the Block. For having started quite recently, they already offer a large number of exchanges and wallets. They focus on beautiful design and ease of use for their portfolio tracking and on deadly efficiency in their Accointing-tool.

While their portfolio capabilities are quite substantial, their focus lies on tax optimization — inventory methods, holding periods, multiple wallet strategies and tax tips.

Just as CoinTracker, they have also taken to creative stealing when it comes to names. Wha the ICO is to the Crypto-IPO, Accointing could soon become the term for Crypto-Accounting.

Pros and Cons

• Adolescence stage, not all features fully developed yet
• Beautiful User Experience and full-fledged portfolio overview and metrics
• Tax optimization using advanced inventory methods and holding period optimization for best results (FIFO, LIFO, and Specific ID)
• About three to four exchanges added weekly
• Additional tax report capabilities
• Pricing below its competitors, free version offers an optional limited tax report for $50

Visuals

Availability — desktop/mobile/iOS/android

• Website fully optimized for mobile and desktop
• App currently in development

Overall rating: 4/5 Stars

Great potential, beautiful UI and overall promising tool. As of yet, it does not offer enough import functionalities, though they are working hard at that and are currently adding 3–4 exchanges per week.

The pricing model is very competitive, especially as they have just started their open Beta. Currently, you get more than what you pay for.

CryptoTax

Player 3 has entered the game — or at least the third company promising to do tax reports for you from Germany. The purpose of the Bavaria-based start-up is as clear as its name: provide reports for the taxation of your crypto-currencies. The tool has been available in Beta at least since 2016 and wants to create the most reliable and correct tax reports available on the markets.

Brief description of tool

Which is exactly what the tool does. There are still a good many of wallets, ICOs, and exchanges missing but due to the possibility of a manual import, anyone who is willing to put in a bit of manual labor can import anything.

The tool has been developed in cooperation with accounting experts from KPMG and big law firms, so you know it’s going to be legit.

There are furthermore universities and associations involved in some way.

While CryptoTax offers tax report exports for multiple countries, wallets and exchanges, their portfolio management capabilities are quite limited.

Prices start at around 200€ per year, so if you have been making bank, you might be able to actually save quite a bit more using CryptoTax than you’re paying for.

Pros and Cons

• Their support is top notch: They have quite a substantial FAQ section and their support via Telegram is supposedly very good
• The good thing — you can import anything through a manual import
• The bad news — Users have described the complete upload to be a good bit of work as a manual upload is required a little more often than people would have liked.
• For a tax report tool without beautiful portfolio management capabilities, the software is quite expensive.

Visuals

The following is an excerpt of the tax report that CryptoTax provides. It is quite substantial but definitely made for the IRS (or in this case, its German equivalent).

Availability — desktop/mobile/iOS/android

Available through the browser, no software downloads available for iOS, Android or the desktop computer.

Overall rating: 2/5 Stars

As a tax optimizer, the tool gets 4/5 stars, though for portfolio capabilities, this tool isn’t necessarily very useful. You would need a second tool to visualize your portfolio — and who wants that?

TokenTax

TokenTax, founded 2017 in New York, is another strong contender in the “Creatively Naming Your Business” category. It seems that this is the one thing that most of the companies on this list have in common.

Brief description of tool

TokenTax promises the most versatile tracking abilities by also covering margin trading, international exchanges and even have solutions for employees who get paid in cryptocurrencies.

There is no free account, the minimum package is $65. However, TokenTax also offers a full tax filing for as much as $1,499. This includes two personal sessions with an expert.

There is only limited automatic access via API, most exchanges need to be added manually.

Pros and Cons

• Overall, TokenTax is a great single-purpose product, especially for the US-market, if that single purpose is to not worry too much about taxes.
• It doesn’t offer much in the visualization of your portfolio.

Visuals

Availability — desktop/mobile/iOS/android

Available only through browser; no apps or software to download

Overall rating: 2/5 Stars

For tax purposes, this tool is at the higher end of the spectrum concerning pricing, but also gets the job done. If you would like a comprehensive all-in-one solution, TokenTax is not the tool for you.

Originally published at https://medium.com on May 31, 2019.