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Tovari Docs

Investments

Maintained by Jason Ewing, founder of Tovari · Published · How we write these docs

What is Investments?

Section titled “What is Investments?”

Investments is Tovari’s portfolio view of your connected investment accounts. It answers what the accounts you invest through are worth today, how much of that is money you put in rather than money the market made, and what you hold across all of them at once.

It gathers every connected investment account — a brokerage, a 401(k), an IRA — into one portfolio, so you do not have to open four institutions’ websites and add the numbers up yourself.

Which accounts are counted

Section titled “Which accounts are counted”
  • Connected investment accounts only. An account you keep by hand is not part of the portfolio, even if you typed an investment balance into it. It still appears under Accounts and still counts toward your net worth.
  • Crypto exchange and wallet accounts are left out, and cannot be opted in. Their balances still count in Accounts and in net worth, but they are not part of the Investments picture.
  • A closed account drops out of the portfolio, as it does everywhere else.

Every figure is worked out by Tovari

Section titled “Every figure is worked out by Tovari”

Totals, growth, the percentages, each holding’s share of the portfolio and every subtotal are calculated on the server and sent to the screen ready to read. Nothing here is added up by the device in front of you, which is why the same portfolio reads identically on a PC or Mac and in the app. Where a figure genuinely is not known, you see a dash — never a zero standing in for it.

Tracking since

Section titled “Tracking since”

Tovari can only see activity from the date an account was connected, so every figure is measured from then, and the screen says so: Tracking since March 2024. A holding you bought years before that is still counted in what the account is worth today — what starts on the connection date is the history: the daily values, the contributions, and the split between what you added and what the market did. The picture gets more complete every month.

How current are the prices?

Section titled “How current are the prices?”

Prices come from your institution at the last market close, and the screen stamps them: Prices as of Sep 3, 2026 close. Investments is not a live ticker and never says “today” against a price, so a figure here can differ from what your broker shows intraday.

The chart

Section titled “The chart”

The chart plots your portfolio’s daily value over the period you chose.

Once Tovari has enough account activity to tell contributions apart from market movement, it draws two lines: Portfolio value, and a second line for Net invested (what you put in). The gap between the two lines is your growth. Contributions of $500 or more are marked along the bottom axis, so a jump in the line that was really a paycheque contribution is obvious rather than mysterious.

Until that activity has arrived, the chart draws one line — the value — and says so:

We’re still gathering your account activity. Once it arrives, we can separate your contributions from market growth.

A flat “what you put in” line would be a guess, so Tovari draws no line at all rather than a plausible-looking one.

Choosing a period

Section titled “Choosing a period”

The periods are 1M, 3M, 6M, YTD, 1Y and All, where All means since tracking began rather than since you opened the account.

A period that reaches back further than your tracking-since date is shown but disabled, with the reason attached — “Your investments have only been tracked since March 2024, so this period isn’t available yet.” It is deliberately not hidden: a missing chip looks like a bug, and a disabled one explains itself. If a period you ask for cannot be served, Tovari falls back to All rather than inventing history.

Where the change came from

Section titled “Where the change came from”

For the period you are looking at, Tovari shows the arithmetic in full:

Line What it is
Starting value What the portfolio was worth on the first day of the period.
Contributions Money you moved in.
Withdrawals Money you took out.
Market growth The change in what you already held, from price movement.
Dividends & interest Income the holdings paid.
Fees What the institution charged.
Unreconciled The part that could not be attributed to any of the above.
Current value What the portfolio is worth now.

The same period is also summarised two ways: the part you added — contributions less withdrawals — and the part the market added — growth, dividends and interest, less fees.

Market growth is measured, not inferred. It comes from the price movement on the quantities you actually held, day by day — not from subtracting everything else from the total. That is what makes the Unreconciled line possible, and why it exists:

This is the part of the change we couldn’t match to a contribution, a withdrawal, income, a fee or a price move — usually account activity that hasn’t reached us yet. We show it rather than quietly folding it into market growth.

So a non-zero Unreconciled line is not an error on your part, and it is not buried inside the growth figure: it is a line of its own, with a Why is this here? explanation you can open. When Tovari only began keeping daily holdings part-way through the period, it says so under the panel, and the movement before that date appears as Unreconciled.

How is return calculated?

Section titled “How is return calculated?”

Return is time-weighted (Modified Dietz), shown as a percentage beside Growth. That is why it will not equal growth divided by net invested: it accounts for when your money went in, so a large deposit made last week does not read as a year’s worth of poor performance.

Where there is not yet enough history for an honest figure, Tovari shows Not enough history yet instead of a number.

Your holdings

Section titled “Your holdings”

Holdings list what you own, with each security’s quantity, price, value, its share of the portfolio, its cost basis, and the unrealized gain or loss where cost basis is known. By default the same security held in three accounts is shown as one row, so 140 shares spread across an IRA and a taxable account read as 140 shares; a row held in more than one account expands to show each account’s share of it.

Four kinds of row are worth knowing about:

  • Cash appears exactly once, as a single row labelled Uninvested balance, covering the cash and money-market balances sitting in your investment accounts.
  • A security with no ticker is shown by name and marked No ticker · not matched to a security. It is still counted in every total.
  • An account whose institution reports only a total — not the individual holdings — appears as one row reading Your institution shares this account’s total, not its holdings. Its value is kept in the totals rather than dropped, so the holdings figure always ties to the portfolio figure.
  • A holding with no cost basis reads Cost basis unavailable, and is left out of the unrealized gain rather than counted as zero.

Cost basis comes from your institution, wherever the connection supplies it. Tovari states the coverage plainly rather than implying the gain figure covers everything: Based on 6 of 8 positions (75% of holdings value), together with the value that is not covered and the names of the largest holdings missing basis.

When something is not ready yet

Section titled “When something is not ready yet”
  • Getting your holdings… — the accounts are connected and Tovari is waiting for the first holdings to arrive. They usually come within a few minutes and the screen fills in on its own.
  • A connection that needs attention — if an institution needs reconnecting, Investments says so with a Reconnect button. When Tovari still has a value for that account, the value stays on screen and stays in your totals, with a note that it may be out of date. When there is no value at all yet, the notice reads Reconnect to see this balance. Reconnecting is the same flow described under Bank connections.
  • Nothing connected yet — Investments invites you to connect a brokerage, 401(k) or IRA, and explains what you get: your holdings across every institution, and how much of your balance is growth rather than what you put in.

Finding Investments

Section titled “Finding Investments”

Investments is in the left-hand navigation, directly under Accounts.

The three views

Section titled “The three views”

The screen carries three tabs under one header:

  • Overview — the portfolio value, net invested and growth in the header band, then the chart, the “Where the change came from” panel, your accounts, your top holdings, and a Data quality card carrying the cost-basis coverage figure. In that panel the line-by-line arithmetic sits on the left, with two summary cards beside it on the right: What you added and What the market added.
  • Holdings — the full holdings table.
  • Account settings — where you tell Tovari each investment account’s tax treatment, alongside the treatment it detected for itself.

The period selector

Section titled “The period selector”

The period sits in the header beside the help button, and governs the Overview figures only — so it disappears while you are reading Holdings or Account settings. On a PC or Mac the period starts at 1Y. While a newly chosen period is loading, the previous period’s figures stay on screen dimmed rather than blanking out.

Reading the holdings table

Section titled “Reading the holdings table”

The table can be grouped two ways, with a switch on the right of its toolbar:

  • Consolidated — one row per security, across every account.
  • By account — the same holdings grouped under each account, with that account’s own subtotal and unrealized gain. Groups can be collapsed.

Search by ticker or name narrows the rows, and every column heading sorts: security, quantity, price, value, share of portfolio, cost basis, unrealized gain and unrealized percentage.

On a phone browser

Section titled “On a phone browser”

A phone browser shows Investments as its own screens, laid out like the mobile app’s rather than the PC or Mac page squeezed onto a phone.

Open the Accounts tab and tap the Investments card above your account groups.

  • The header shows your portfolio value, with You put in and Market gained beneath it, and stays visible as a compact strip when you scroll.
  • The chart shows your portfolio value as a solid line and what you put in as a dashed line. Drag a finger along it to read the value, the amount you put in and the growth on any day. The period chips underneath — 1M, 3M, 6M, YTD, 1Y and All, starting at YTD — change the period. A period that reaches back before Tovari began tracking is dimmed, and tapping it says why.
  • See the full breakdown opens the line-by-line arithmetic described above, right on the screen.
  • Your investment accounts follow, each with its value and its change over the period; tapping one opens that account’s market value and its list of dated values, with Load more for older ones. An account that needs reconnecting carries its Reconnect notice just under the accounts card.
  • Your four largest holdings come next, with See all to open the full list.

Holdings lists every position consolidated across your accounts, largest first. Search is the control in the header — tap it to filter by ticker or name — and the sort control in the band offers value, share of portfolio, gain/loss and name. The coverage line sits under the list. Grouping holdings by account is offered on a PC or Mac only.

While your holdings are still arriving, the screen shows a placeholder and checks again about once a minute, so the numbers fill in on their own. Set each account’s tax treatment from its Edit account sheet.

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