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Importing a Starting Balance

A how-to guide on entering a starting balance into the Crypto Tax Calculator platform for users not wanting to import previous year/s data.

Shoota Tanahashi avatar
Written by Shoota Tanahashi
Updated over 5 months ago

While Crypto Tax Calculator strongly advises importing your entire trading history for accurate calculations, there may be instances where you don't want to import all your transaction history. An example of this would be:

"My total cumulative trading history from the past 5 years of trading exceeds what Crypto Tax Calculator can support, so I would like only to import my current year's data to work out my tax liabilities for this financial year. How can I do this inside of the platform?"

=Before you proceed with this method=

Please note that you need accurate cost bases and acquisition time or ending balances from all of your previous years to proceed with this method. If this information is available, the following will be a how-to guide using an example scenario on entering your ending balance and cost base as an initial 'starting' balance into the Crypto Tax Calculator platform.

Step 1: Entering Starting Balance

Importing Starting Balances One By One

This method suits you when you don't have many assets to import.

"I have traded for 5 years and have ended the last financial year with 10 ETH with a cost base of $10000 on Binance Exchange. But because my total trading history exceeds the allowed limit on Crypto Tax Calculator, I would like to import just my current years worth of trading data where calculations will be made from this entered figure. How do I do this inside of the platform?"

1) First, navigate to the 'Transactions' Tab located at the very top of your account, followed by navigating to the '+ Add Transaction' button found top right;


2) Click 'Other' to create a singular incoming transaction;

3) Proceed by filling in all relevant details. You must ensure the timestamp is in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format.

Please note that this timestamp will become your NEW holdings acquisition date. This might impact your long-term and short-term taxable gains.

The category would be 'Buy' (to increase the balance), enter the currency and quantity, then followed by adding the cost base of the total asset into the value column;


4) You will then be prompted to enter the sources of where this balance is being started. In this example, as it's Binance, we would search, select, and set as Binance for both;


5) Lastly, you will encounter a section for fees. Since you are only inputting a starting balance, there is no need to fill out this section, so leave it blank. Click 'Add Transaction' to proceed;


6) Upon adding this transaction, you will then see you now have an overall balance of 10 ETH with a cost base of $10,000 so that when you import your current year data, all calculations related to ETH will be made off of this entered figure;


7) Finally, you would need to import your remaining data. Go to the 'Integrations' tab at the top of your account > '+ Add Integration', and from there, search for the specific integration you want (in this example, we would search for Binance.)

Bulk Importing Starting Balances

You can bulk upload starting balances using our custom CSV. This method suits you when you have multiple assets within one account.

Note: Please use a separate CSV file for each account/wallet/exchange. For example, your Ethereum wallet, Coinbase, and Binance should all have their own custom CSV and be imported into CTC under their integrations.

Step 2: Importing the new transactions

Once you've imported all starting balances, you can import and sync the transactions from the new date.

Sync via API

On the Integration page, select the integration, scroll down to locate 'Advanced Options,' where you can retrieve transactions from a specific date using the 'Start import from' function (please note that this function is only available for APIs);


If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact our friendly support team via chat. Alternatively, you can check out our dedicated Help Centre for more guides 😊

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