How to set up your first portfolio in SavvyPortfolio

A portfolio is the container everything else in SavvyPortfolio lives in. Your transactions go into it, your holdings are worked out from it, your dividends hang off those holdings, and your CGT report is built from the lot. Nothing else works until one exists.

The good news is that setting one up asks for a single thing: a name. It takes well under a minute and you can change the details afterwards.

You need a SavvyPortfolio account first, which takes an email address and a password. You do not need your CSV file yet, and you do not need to have decided how you want to organise anything.

Step 1 — Start from the empty dashboard

With no portfolios yet, the dashboard has nothing to draw, so it shows a single centred prompt and nothing else. The heading reads Portfolio Tracker, with the line "No portfolios found." underneath and one button: Create Your First Portfolio.

This is the only screen in the app that says "Portfolio Tracker" rather than SavvyPortfolio, so do not be thrown by it. It is the zero-portfolio state, and you will not see it again once you have created one.

There is no side nav and no top bar at this point — the rest of the dashboard only appears once a portfolio exists. Click the button.

Step 2 — Open the create dialog

A dialog opens. The title is Create your first portfolio and the description reads "Give it a name to get started. You can add transactions and edit details afterwards."

Read that second sentence, because it is the part that saves first-timers a lot of hesitation. Nothing here is permanent. You are not choosing a tax structure or locking in a method.

The dialog holds one field, labelled Portfolio Name, with the placeholder e.g., My Portfolio. Below it are two buttons, Cancel and Create Portfolio.

Step 3 — Name your portfolio

Click into Portfolio Name and type. The example used throughout this series is Growth Portfolio. Create Portfolio sits greyed out until the field has something in it, so the button turning solid is your cue that the name has registered.

The name is a label for you, not something the ATO ever sees, so pick whatever makes the portfolio easy to recognise later. If you hold shares in more than one name, say a personal holding and a joint one, name this one after whichever set of trades you are about to import. Keeping one legal entity's trades in one portfolio matters, because capital gains are assessed per entity and mixing them produces a report nobody can use.

Do not overthink it. You can edit the details afterwards.

Step 4 — Create it

Click Create Portfolio. The dialog closes and a toast appears at the bottom centre of the screen reading Portfolio created over the name you chose, Growth Portfolio.

That toast is your confirmation that the portfolio has been saved. If you click Cancel instead, nothing is created and you land back on the "No portfolios found." screen, so you can start again with no harm done.

There is no second confirmation step and no setup wizard to work through. One field, one button, done.

Step 5 — Your portfolio is live

The zero-portfolio prompt is gone. In its place is a No Portfolio Data card: "Import your transactions to see your portfolio holdings and performance", with an Import Transactions button. That is the app telling you exactly where to go next.

What you should see

A working, empty portfolio under the name you typed, confirmed by the Portfolio created toast.

The dashboard shows the No Portfolio Data card with its Import Transactions button. There are no holdings, no value and no gains yet, because you have not given it a single transaction. That is the expected state, not a failure. Every number in SavvyPortfolio, from your portfolio value to your taxable gain, is calculated from transactions, so the app has nothing to work with until you add some.

Common gotchas

• The free plan is one portfolio, shown in your usage as 1 / 1. Additional portfolios are a Pro feature, along with unlimited holdings, CGT CSV export and the ATO-ready PDF.
• Because free is one portfolio, keep it to one legal entity. Personal, joint and trust holdings each need their own portfolio, which means Pro if you run more than one.
• The name is not locked in. The dialog says so: you can add transactions and edit details afterwards.
• The Portfolio Tracker heading on the empty screen is the zero-portfolio state, not the product name. The product is SavvyPortfolio.
• Creating a portfolio does not create holdings. The No Portfolio Data card stays until you import a CSV or record a transaction by hand.

What's next

The portfolio is the easy part. The next step is getting your trades into it, and for most Australian investors that means one file: how to import your CommSec CSV into SavvyPortfolio walks through the whole wizard, from picking your broker to watching the holdings table build itself.

If you have not exported the file from CommSec yet, how to export your CommSec transaction history covers that side first, including which date range to use so your cost base goes back far enough. On a different broker, the same import wizard handles it with one extra mapping step.