How to read your SavvyPortfolio dashboard

The first time you open the dashboard with real data in it, there are a lot of numbers on screen and no obvious order to read them in. Which one is your money? Which one is the tax one? Which one moves every time the market ticks?

There are only five things to read, and each answers one question. Once you can name them, the whole screen reads in about ten seconds.

This guide takes about five minutes and needs a portfolio with transactions in it. If yours is still empty, either import your CommSec CSV or add a transaction by hand first.

The figures below come from the demo portfolio: four holdings worth $16,600.00 on a cost base of $15,462.

Step 1 — The balance hero

The dark card at the top is the headline. Under the kicker PORTFOLIO VALUE · LIVE ASX the figure reads $16,600.00. That's what your shares are worth right now: quantity times the current price, summed across every holding.

Below it, a lime pill reads +$119 · 0.72% with the line today · 4 holdings. That pill is today's move, not your total gain. Your total gain is the +7.4% badge in the top right of the card.

Two things to be clear about. The value moves with the market, so it will differ from what you saw yesterday — and so does that pill, which resets each trading day. And the +7.4% is unrealised: it's on paper, you haven't sold anything, and no tax is owed on it. Nothing on this card is a tax figure.

Step 2 — The chart

Inside the hero card there are two lines. The solid lime one is what your holdings are worth. The dashed one is what you paid for them. The legend spells it out: ━ Portfolio · ┄ Cost basis.

Read the gap between them: that's your unrealised gain, drawn out over time. The dashed line steps up each time you buy, steps down when you sell, and sits flat in between — the demo's one downward step is a part-sale of CBA. The lime line moves whenever the market does. Whenever the lime line is above the dashed one, you're ahead of what you've put in.

Along the bottom, month labels mark out the window — Jan, May, Oct, Feb, Jun in the demo, running from your first transaction to today. Once SavvyPortfolio has ASX 200 data covering that window, the dashed line switches to the index and the legend renames itself, which turns the chart into the "was I any good, or was it just the market?" question instead.

Step 3 — The stat column

Two cards sit beside the hero, and they're the ones worth slowing down for.

UNREALISED P&L reads $1,138.18, with +7.36% · cost $15,462 beneath it. That's the same gain the hero badge summarises as +7.4%, but now shown against the number it's measured from: your cost base, brokerage included. Value minus cost base is the gain.

DIVIDENDS reads $0.00 with $0 franking credits underneath, and a financial-year dropdown reading FY 23–24. Don't read that as a problem. The demo portfolio has share transactions in it and no dividends recorded, so there is genuinely nothing to total. The card fills in once you record a dividend.

The dropdown matters. Every dividend figure here follows the financial year you've selected, so check it before you decide a number is wrong. And when this card does have figures in it, they're real income, unlike the unrealised gain above: the dividend total is assessable income and the franking credits are a refundable tax offset that comes back to you on your return.

Step 4 — Your holdings

Below everything, the holdings table breaks the headline down into its parts. The header says 4 positions, and the rows are sorted by value: CSL, AAPL, CBA, then WBC. The columns worth reading are Symbol, Quantity, Avg Cost, Live Price, Value, Weight, P&L and P&L %.

CBA is the clearest read. 30 shares at an avg cost of $95.90 and a live price of $108.50, giving a value of $3,255.00, a weight of 19.6%, and an unrealised $378.03 at +13.14%. The small arrow beside the live price is the direction the stock has moved today — up or down, no figure attached.

The four rows add up to the $16,600.00 in the hero, so when the headline moves you can see which holding moved it. The Avg Cost column is per-share cost base, brokerage included, which is why it rarely matches the price you remember paying.

Step 5 — What needs attention

Open Action Hub from the side nav. A panel slides in from the right, titled Action Hub, with Stocks in your portfolio that need attention underneath.

This is the queue of things SavvyPortfolio noticed and can't decide for you: gaps and oddities in your data that need a human. A price it can't fetch, a share split waiting to be applied, a dividend with no franking set.

With the demo portfolio there's nothing outstanding, so the panel shows All Clear — No stocks need your attention right now. Your portfolio is in good shape. That's the state you want before tax time. When it isn't clear, work the list down: an unresolved item here usually means a number somewhere else on the screen is built on incomplete data.

What you should see

A portfolio value of $16,600.00 across 4 holdings, a +7.4% badge beside it, and today's move in the lime pill — +$119 · 0.72% in the demo.

UNREALISED P&L of $1,138.18 at +7.36% · cost $15,462. DIVIDENDS at $0.00 and $0 franking credits for FY 23–24, because nothing has been recorded yet.

Four rows in the holdings table, CBA up the most in percentage terms at $378.03 (+13.14%) and AAPL the largest gain in dollars at $436.05 (+9.65%). And All Clear in the Action Hub.

Common gotchas

• Unrealised P&L is not a tax number. It's pre-tax and pre-discount, and it exists whether or not you ever sell. For your actual capital gains, with the 50% CGT discount applied where it's due, open CGT Report from the side nav.
• $0.00 dividends is usually not a bug. The card only counts dividends you've recorded, for the financial year in its dropdown. Record one, or change the year, before concluding that data is missing — open the dashboard in early July and $0.00 is simply a financial year that has barely started.
• Prices are live, so the figures move. Check the Refreshed pill at the top of the dashboard to see how current they are. Don't expect the same total two hours later.
• Avg Cost isn't your purchase price. It includes brokerage, which is exactly what the ATO wants in a cost base, and it's blended across parcels — which is why CBA's $95.90 isn't a price you'll find on any contract note.
• The dashed line is a reference, not a holding. Cost basis is money you've put in; when it switches to the ASX 200 it's an index for context. Neither one is a position you own.
• None of this is tax advice. The dashboard is a live view of your own data. Before you lodge anything based on it, check the figures with a registered tax agent.

What's next

Four holdings fit on one screen. Forty don't, and that's when the holdings toolbar starts earning its keep. How to sort, filter and search your holdings covers the search box, the gainers and losers filter, the column picker, and the one filter with real tax consequences: isolating parcels you've held longer than twelve months. And if the empty DIVIDENDS card raised more questions than it answered, franking credits explained walks through where a franking credit comes from and what it does on your return.