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Open Net Worth Docs

Positions, lots, and cost basis

Hold investments — equities, crypto, commodities, property — and Open Net Worth tracks them at two levels: your position (how much of something you hold, in which account) and the lots underneath it (the individual purchases that make up the holding).

Positions

A position is one instrument held in one account — “100 shares of VTI in your brokerage account,” “0.5 BTC in your crypto exchange.” Its market value updates as prices move; nothing about it is stored — it’s price × quantity, converted to base currency, computed fresh whenever you look.

Lots — the record of what you actually paid

Every purchase is recorded as a lot: a quantity, a purchase date, and a cost basis (what you paid, including fees — spread evenly across the lot’s units, never dropped). A position’s lots are what let the app tell you not just what something’s worth today, but what you actually have riding on each part of it.

Selling part of a holding

Sell (or otherwise dispose of) part of a position and the app has to decide which lots you’re selling from — different purchases can carry different cost bases and holding periods. By default it sells your oldest lots first (FIFO — first in, first out), the conventional approach. Need to specify a purchase — for tax reasons, say — name the lot instead; the app validates it exists and holds enough quantity, and refuses the disposal outright rather than guessing if it doesn’t.

Realized vs. unrealized gains

Unrealized gain is what an open position’s currently worth versus what you paid — recalculated live, every time you look, never stored. Realized gain locks in the moment you sell: a permanent record of proceeds minus cost basis for exactly the lots that sale consumed. Only a sale creates a realized event; watching a holding’s value change never does.

Where prices come from

Most instruments price automatically from a live market feed. Some don’t have one — physical gold, real estate, a private holding — so you set the price by hand; live-priced and manually-priced holdings work side by side in the same portfolio.

A note on options and equity compensation

Options contracts (covered calls, for example) are tracked end-to-end, but this is a newer, beta part of the app — treat options-related figures with more caution than the rest of your portfolio.

Equity compensation (RSUs, vesting grants) is not yet a hardened part of the app. It’s tracked, but hasn’t been through the same verification as the rest of investment tracking. Expect this area to keep changing.