Portfolio software compared: which tool for which investor

There is no best portfolio software, only tools built for different sources of data. Consumer trackers such as Parqet and getquin read what a broker delivers. Institutional platforms such as Addepar and QPLIX connect custodian banks and serve professional teams. Carta keeps the cap table for the company that issues the shares. Document-based tools such as Valued start from the letters a private investor receives. Which one fits depends on what you own and on who sends you the figures.

We make one of these tools, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to describe each product in the words of its own website and to say plainly where ours is the wrong choice.

The question that sorts the market: where do your figures come from?

Every holding reaches its owner through some channel. Listed securities arrive as transactions from a broker, in a fixed format, priced daily by an exchange. A fund commitment arrives as a capital call notice, a distribution letter and a quarterly report, each a PDF written by a different administrator. An angel stake arrives as a notarised deed and, if you are lucky, an updated cap table after each round.

Software is built around one of these channels. A tool that is excellent at one is usually clumsy at the others, because the hard part is different. For securities the hard part is importing thousands of transactions correctly. For fund interests it is reading a notice that nets a distribution against a call and working out what was actually paid. For a company's own share register it is legal accuracy. That is why the categories below barely compete with each other, and why choosing across categories goes wrong more often than choosing within one.

Spreadsheet: right for longer than vendors admit

For five fund commitments and a few stakes, a spreadsheet is enough, and it has two advantages no product matches: it can model anything, and it belongs to you. Its weakness is not capability. It is that nothing forces the entry to match the document, and that the person who built it is the only one who can read it. We set out the signs that it has stopped working in when the spreadsheet stops working. Until they appear, stay with it.

Consumer trackers: Parqet and getquin

Parqet, a German-language product that says it stores its data in Germany, describes itself as a way to keep your wealth in view: a portfolio dashboard with performance, dividends and allocation analysis for shares, ETFs and crypto. Transactions come in by uploading the broker's PDFs or through connected accounts. getquin calls itself a wealth platform and lets users connect brokerage and bank accounts through interfaces to a large number of providers, track net worth and dividends, and plan for retirement; it also runs a community forum.

Choose one of these if most of what you own is in a securities account. They are built for exactly that, and their imports and dividend views are better than anything a fund-oriented tool offers. Where a tracker lets you add other assets by hand, remember that a value typed in by hand is a spreadsheet cell with a nicer frame. Neither website speaks of capital calls, an unfunded commitment or a fully diluted stake after a financing round, and that is no criticism: it is not what these products are for. If half your wealth is of that kind, the tracker will show the other half very well.

Institutional platforms: Addepar and QPLIX

Addepar describes itself as a data and AI platform for investment professionals and names banks, family offices, fund managers, institutional allocators and wealth management firms as its clients. For family offices it promises to bring data from several custodians, illiquid alternatives and complex legal entities into one source, including trusts, holding companies and several generations.

QPLIX, from Munich, says it grew out of family office practice and now serves family offices, wealth managers, banks, corporate treasuries and foundations. It covers all asset classes and complex ownership structures, with reporting, analytics, accounting and tax integration and client portals.

These are the right choice for an organisation: an office with employees, several legal entities, a need for audit-proof reporting to family members or clients, and holdings at several custodian banks whose data should flow in automatically. They are complete in a way no smaller tool is. They are also projects. Someone has to implement them, connect the banks, define the structures and maintain the data for the illiquid part. Neither vendor shows prices on the pages we read, which is itself a signal about the kind of buyer intended. For a private individual with EUR 10 million and no staff they are the wrong size, for the same reason an own family office is, as we worked through in family office, wealth manager or do it yourself.

Cap-table platforms: Carta serves the company, not you

Carta is the best-known name in cap tables, which is why angels ask about it. Its customer is on the other side of the table: private companies that manage their share register, option plans and valuations on it, and funds that buy fund administration. An investor meets Carta when a portfolio company uses it and grants access to the holding.

That is useful and it is not a portfolio. You see what each company on the platform shows you, one login per relationship, and nothing for the German GmbH whose shareholder list is a PDF from the notary. If you are a founder choosing where to keep your company's cap table, Carta and its competitors are the category to look at. If you are an investor in twelve companies, you need your own record of twelve positions, whatever the companies use.

Document-based tools: where Valued fits, and where it does not

Valued starts from the paper. You upload a capital call, a distribution notice, a quarterly report, a cap table or a convertible loan agreement; the software reads the document, proposes the figures, and books nothing until you have approved them. From the booked cash flows it computes paid-in capital, unfunded commitment, DPI, TVPI and net IRR for fund commitments, and ownership by round for direct investments. The source document stays attached to each figure.

It is the wrong tool for several readers.

If your wealth is a securities account at one or two brokers, use a tracker. Their automatic import is the thing you need.

If you run an office with staff, several custodians and clients to report to, you need an institutional platform with bank feeds, accounting and access rights at a depth we do not offer.

If you are a company that needs to issue shares and manage an option pool, you need a cap-table platform. Valued records what an investor holds; it is not a share register.

If you have three holdings and enjoy your spreadsheet, keep it.

And if you want software that connects to your bank and fills itself, a document-based tool will disappoint you: someone still has to upload the PDF and approve the figures. We think that step is the point, because a figure nobody has checked against its document is a guess. It is still work.

How to choose

List what you own by channel: how much arrives from brokers, how much as letters from fund administrators, how much as deeds and shareholder resolutions. The largest block decides the category. Then test with your own material, not the vendor's demo data: one real document or one real export, through each candidate. Whichever tool gets your most awkward holding right is the one that fits.