How do you keep track of your assets?

[Neverstop]

I am in the process of incorporating my asset allocation into my budget and taxes spreadsheet but I don't know how to go about keeping track of my assets. I keep a rolling budget of all my income along with all of my deductions, costs, bills, net worth, tax liability, etc. so that I can know where I am at currently. I want to incorporate my asset allocation to the spreadsheet but don't know if I should or how to incorporate asset allocation to it.

Originally I only planned on keeping track of what I put into my accounts and using that to keep track of my allocation, but I am wondering how other people do it and if you keep track of the purchase price of stocks/ETFs and their losses or gains and use that for your AA.

[ender]

I think you're asking a slightly more involved question than "tracking assets."

I just use Mint to track my assets. But I think you're looking for something more complicated.

When I rebalance, I just use a simple spreadsheet with some sumifs.

[Mmm_Donuts]

We have separate spreadsheets to track purchase prices and AA because we only need to track the details for the taxable accounts. For AA we have a spreadsheet where we track the allocations of all accounts (my rrsp, TFSA, taxable and cash accounts as well as my husband's). We update the AA roughly quarterly, or whenever we are making new contributions (once or twice a year.) Both are in Excel and pretty simple, with just the basic info. For AA we have a current % and a target % and if they're out of sync then we know where to focus our contributions. Nothing fancy.

[MDM]

We have used Quicken for >20 years.  Even paying the quasi-forced upgrade fee every 3 years seems cheaper than spending the time to do similar things ourselves.

For some things (e.g., AT&T and spinoff share bases several years ago) we have had dedicated spreadsheet calculations.

If you want some spreadsheet ideas, see Using a spreadsheet to maintain a portfolio - Bogleheads.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

I use Google's spreadsheets.  I can call on =GOOGLEFINANCE("VTI", "price") in any cell of the spreadsheet to get the (delayed) price of an ETF or mutual fund.  I track the number of shares by hand, and when you multiply those together you get the value of each holding.

It's nice having a summary of assets by percentage (stocks, bonds, cash).  I track the target percentage for each fund, and at one point created a sheet (one of many in a spreadsheet document) that tracks re-balancing for me.  So if Total Stock gained ground maybe it suggests to sell some of that and buy some Total Bond.

I'd suggest starting a spreadsheet from scratch, and at least add up all your stock funds to get your amount of stocks.. all the bond funds for allocation to bonds.. and then calculate the percentage of each.  That gives you the most basic picture of your assets, and can help decide when re-balancing is needed.

[dividendman]

=GOOGLEFINANCE("VTI", "price") in any cell of the spreadsheet to get the (delayed) price of an ETF or mutual fund. 

zomg! Amazing. I might move to google spreadsheets. Or maybe i should program this into excel... hrm.

[With This Herring]

I use Google's spreadsheets.  I can call on =GOOGLEFINANCE("VTI", "price") in any cell of the spreadsheet to get the (delayed) price of an ETF or mutual fund.  I track the number of shares by hand, and when you multiply those together you get the value of each holding.
*snip*

You can download plugins for Excel and Libre Office Calc that do the same thing, if you don't want your stock info living in Google Sheets.
Excel webservices stock price pulls
Excel VBA to use Yahoo as a source
LibreOffice Calc Extension - I used this one last year with good success

Besides Quicken, there is GnuCash (another full-financial-tracking program), which also pulls in stock prices automatically.  In general, GnuCash won't download your transactions though.

I second the recommendation of that Bogleheads page.  It's good stuff.

[Travis]

I use Personal Capital's free tools to keep general tabs on my net worth and assets.  I have a separate spreadsheet I update on the 1st of the month that takes those net worth totals by category (cash, bonds, domestic stock, international stock) and displays them as percentages in order to keep track of my AA.