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How to Export Your National Bank Direct Brokerage History for Tax Calculation

National Bank Direct Brokerage exports your account activity as a CSV file from the history view of its Activities tab. Exporting takes a few minutes, and the ACB calculator reads the file directly.

By Sam Tcherner · Published · Last reviewed

Part 1

Download Your National Bank Activities CSV

  1. Sign in at nbdb.ca from a computer. The NBC Wealth app shows your activity history, but we have not found an export in it.

  2. Open the Activities tab, called Activités in French, and its history view.

  3. Choose a period that starts on the day the account was opened and ends today. Important: ACB is cumulative, so one year on its own gives the wrong cost base for anything bought earlier. See the January look-forward note before choosing the end date.

  4. Set the file options. Delimiter is the pipe |. Decimals use a period .. Date format is mm-dd-yyyy.

  5. Press Export.

  6. If the export leaves out an account you traded in, such as your US-dollar account, repeat steps 3 to 5 for it. Important: upload both currencies together. National Bank keeps your Canadian-dollar and US-dollar accounts separate, and each account number is read as its own account.

We have not found National Bank instructions for the export itself. The steps here follow the import guides written by Trademetria and Snowball Analytics, and the export a customer sent us.

Check your file. The export we received was named like MULTI_20261012.csv and has 15 columns. They are Account number, Account description, Trade date, Settlement date, Processing date, Market, Symbol, Description, Operation, Quantity, Price, Commission, Net amount, Balance as at settlement date and Current balance. Its rows were listed by processing date, newest first. Look at the earliest row so you know where your history starts.

One export holds at most 2,000 activities. If your history is longer, export it in pieces, for example everything up to July 31 in one file and from August 1 in the next, and upload the pieces together. A row that two pieces share is counted once. A file of exactly 2,000 rows is named in your warnings, because it may stop before the end of its period.

We have not found a published limit on how far back the history reaches. In the export we received, the period selected rows by their processing date, so a posting dated in an earlier year but processed inside the period was included. A posting processed after the period ends can be left out even when its trade date falls inside it, which is one more reason to end the period today.

About the file settings. Dates written like 09/29/2026, 09-29-2026 or 2026-09-29 are read. A file with a comma as its decimal mark, or with dates that show the day first, is refused, with a message asking you to export it again with these three settings. It is never partly read, because a misread decimal mark or a day read as a month would change your numbers without any sign of it.

Some files cannot show which comes first. In a file of a few dividends paid early in each month, a date like 05/06/2026 reads as May 6 or as June 5. Such a file is read month first, the order of the mm-dd-yyyy setting, and your warnings name a date from it so you can check the setting you used.

Part 2

Upload to ActiveACB

  1. Open the calculator.

  2. Add every National Bank CSV exactly as it downloaded. Important: do not open and save it in a spreadsheet program first. A re-saved copy can change the delimiter, the dates and the numbers.

  3. If a file includes a TFSA, RRSP or other registered account, enter its account number as registered on the upload page. Important: the file does not say whether an account is registered, so every account you do not mark is treated as a taxable account.

  4. Run the calculation. Each file is labelled NATIONAL BANK CSV and read directly, with no column mapping.

The calculator recognizes the file by its 15 column names, rather than its filename.

Current balance is the account’s cash after each day’s rows. The calculator adds up your rows and compares them with it. An export that starts after earlier activity, or a stretch missing between two exports, is named in your warnings with its dates and amount. The check follows cash, so a missing row that moved no cash can still slip past it.

What ActiveACB Reads From Your National Bank File

Buy and Sell rows take their cash from the Net amount column, which includes any fees deducted from the trade, and the Commission column is shown as given. A Market of CAN is read as a TSX listing and USA as a US listing. Dividend rows are recorded as dividend income.

Distributions. A Distribution row is recorded as income under the fund, and its character (income, capital gains or return of capital) comes from your T3. The quantity on a Distribution row is the number of units you held, so it never adds or removes units.

Reinvested distributions. A reinvested distribution shows up as a Distribution row paired with a Stock Dividnd row (spelled that way in the file) of the opposite amount on the same day. The pair is recorded as income, and the reinvested amount is added to the fund’s cost base. The two rows are matched across all the National Bank files you upload together, so a pair split between two exports, or repeated in an overlapping one, is still counted once. Where ActiveACB has tax factors for the fund and year, that increase is counted once, never twice. A Stock Dividnd row without its matching Distribution is named in your warnings and left out, and so is a pair whose amounts have other signs.

Dividend reinvestment. National Bank says securities enrolled in its dividend reinvestment program pay dividends in shares, giving you whole shares and paying the fraction in cash. We have not yet seen how a reinvestment appears in the history. A Stock Dividnd row that delivers new units is named in your warnings and left out, so if one appears, add those shares with the trade editor.

Cancellations. A Cancellation row is matched to the posting it reverses, in the same account and security with the opposite amount, and both rows are dropped. A cancelled trade names the trade’s date in its description, and that date is used. The posting can be in another of the National Bank files you upload together. A Cancellation that matches nothing is named in your warnings.

When National Bank posts a distribution again as of an earlier day, with that day as the settlement date, the distribution is dated on that day if your trades show you held the units it was paid on then.

Commissions. National Bank charges no commission on online stock and ETF trades, and exchanges can add fees of their own. In the export we received, the Commission column was 0.00 on every trade. The calculation uses the Net amount, the cash that actually moved.

Deposits and withdrawals. Deposit and Withdrawal rows in a Canadian-dollar account are listed in your import notes and change nothing else. In a US-dollar account they are recorded as transfers in and out of your US-dollar cash.

GICs and rows with no symbol. A GIC is a deposit, not capital property, so GIC rows are left out with a note. A security traded without a symbol is identified by its description, and your warnings name each one. ActiveACB never invents a ticker for it. Endings National Bank adds to a description, such as /NON-SOL. on an order it did not solicit, are not part of the name, so a sale meets the purchases it closes.

Canadian-dollar and US-dollar accounts. The currency of each account comes from its Account description, such as CAD Cash or USD Cash.

A TSX-listed security bought or sold in the US-dollar account at a conversion stated on its row, such as /CONV TO USD @39.55 %US PREM, is valued at that rate, the one the trade used. Shares of one class traded on the TSX in one account and in New York in the other get one cost base for both lines, because shares of one class of one company are the same property wherever they trade. National Bank shortens security names, so two listings with the same name are joined only when ActiveACB has checked that they are one class of shares. Otherwise they stay apart and your warnings ask you to check them.

Not read yet. The calculator does not read these from a National Bank file yet.

  • Options
  • Bonds and debentures
  • Corporate actions such as splits and mergers
  • Stock Dividnd rows that deliver new units
  • Interest
  • Withholding tax
  • Currency conversions
  • Recognizing a registered account on its own

A row of any of these is named in your warnings with its row number and left out, never read as a stock trade. You can add what it changes with the trade editor, and you enter registered account numbers on the upload page. When a dividend or distribution was paid on more units than your uploaded trades hold, your warnings say so, because the purchases before your file are missing.

Early support, and your file helps. National Bank Direct Brokerage support is newer than IBKR, Questrade or Wealthsimple and was built from a real customer export. To keep improving it, each National Bank file you upload is kept privately for 7 days and then deleted, as the privacy policy describes. You can turn this off on your profile page. Rows the parser does not recognize are never guessed at, and each one is named in your warnings with its row number.

Fill In Older History

If the history does not reach back to the day the account was opened, or a holding was transferred in from another firm, the calculator needs those purchases from somewhere else.

From another broker’s export. If the earlier history is in an export ActiveACB reads, such as one from IBKR, Questrade, Wealthsimple, CIBC, TD or Qtrade, or one you set up with the column mapper, upload it with your National Bank file so the cost pools across both. Do not also enter those trades by hand, or they are counted twice.

From National Bank documents. For history no export covers, rebuild it by hand. None of these documents is read automatically. Use them to reconstruct the missing buys, sells and other ACB adjustments, and add them through the trade editor. Purchases alone are not enough.

Book value of shares transferred in. National Bank enters the value the transferring institution sent and says it cannot confirm it. Its help page explains how to correct the value in your account with form 27740. The calculator works from the trades in your files and does not read that value.

If This Applies to You

Sold at a loss in December? Important: extend the period at least through January 30 of the following year so January repurchases are included. If that date has not arrived yet, export again after it has passed. Without those rows, the calculator cannot detect superficial losses caused by those repurchases.

Moved a security between your Canadian-dollar and US-dollar accounts? It shows as a Transfer out of one and into the other on the same day, and National Bank charges $9.95 per security for the move. With both exports in the upload, a move between two taxable accounts is read as a move between your own accounts, so nothing is sold and the cost base carries over. The $9.95 fee and its GST are read as account fees.

Moved a security into a TFSA, RRSP or other registered account? A move into an account you entered as registered is a disposition at its market value that day, and a loss on it can never be claimed. The export gives no value for it, so your warnings ask you to enter it with the trade editor as a CONTRIBUTION row at the broker-recorded fair market value per share on the contribution date, in Canadian dollars and with zero commission. This action supports shares and fund units contributed to your own TFSA, RRSP, FHSA or RRIF. Other plans or ownership arrangements need review. ActiveACB reports a gain on a supported contribution and leaves a loss out. A move out of a registered account is a purchase at its market value that day, and your warnings ask you to enter that purchase with the trade editor.

Optional: compare with your T5008. See why your National Bank T5008 may not reflect your true ACB.

Which National Bank tax slips should I expect?

For a non-registered account, National Bank’s regulatory page, published in French, put the start of mailing for the 2025 tax year at February 26, 2026 for the T5 and its Summary of Investment Income, February 27 for the T5008 and its Securities Transactions Summary, and March 18 for the T3 and its Summary of Trust Income. T5013 slips for limited partnerships were due by March 31. Quebec residents receive the matching Relevé slips. Slips are under the Documents tab in Tax slips, and in the NBC Wealth app.

The Activities history is still the better source for an adjusted cost base calculation. It is the National Bank file ActiveACB reads directly and includes purchases from the period you choose. National Bank’s own tax guide says the cost in box 20 of the T5008 may not be your ACB.

The dates come from National Bank’s regulatory page and its 2025 tax slip brochure, both in French.

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