Choose Your Broker
We support multiple Canadian brokerages. Select yours to see how to export the file the ACB calculator needs. Your first calculation is free with an account.
Wealthsimple
Any Other Broker
Using a broker without a native parser? The column mapper imports any trade-history CSV or XLSX.
Which export do you need?
Each broker offers several downloads, and most of them are the wrong one for a tax calculation. A year-end statement or holdings summary shows what you own today; an ACB calculation needs every transaction event. The correct exports are the IBKR Flex Query XML, the Questrade Activity Report XLSX, and the Wealthsimple activity CSV. All three contain trades with dates, quantities, prices, and commissions, plus dividends, interest, and corporate actions where the broker reports them.
Why the date range matters
ACB is cumulative. Under Canada’s pooled-cost rules, every purchase since you first opened the position changes your average cost, so an export covering only the tax year will produce wrong numbers for anything you bought earlier. Set the export range to your full account history, from inception to today. If part of your history is genuinely unavailable, you can reconstruct the missing early trades in the starter template and upload it alongside your broker files, but a complete export is always the more reliable route. This is also why your broker’s T5008 slip is not enough on its own; see T5008 and Schedule 3 for how the two relate. After calculating, the built-in T5008 checker lets you type your slip's Box 20 and Box 21 totals and see exactly why they differ from the engine's figures.
Common export mistakes
- Partial date range: exporting January to December of the tax year instead of full account history.
- Wrong report type: a positions or performance summary instead of the activity/transaction export.
- Missing accounts: if you traded the same security in more than one account or at more than one broker, upload all of them in one session so pooling and cross-account superficial loss detection work (multi-file uploads require season access).
- Editing the file first: upload the export exactly as the broker produced it. If you need to correct data, do it afterwards through the trade editor or the Raw Trades XLSX re-import.
More detail on file formats and multi-account uploads is in the FAQ.