records
Keep your own records
The rule
Nobody keeps your paper trail for you; save contract notes, statements, and a tax-lot sheet before you ever need them.
Where it flips
A clean app dashboard feels like a complete record. Where it misleads: you trust one screen and keep nothing yourself. The fix: save the underlying documents yourself, and reconcile them against the app rather than the other way round.
Apps show a tidy single number, but that number is not evidence. When taxes, a dispute, or transmission comes, you need the contract notes, the CAS, dividend records, and a lot-by-lot sheet in your own folder. The reader builds this quietly through the year, because reconstructing it later is painful or impossible.
A worked example
At tax time a reader's app shows one gain figure, but a bonus issue changed the lots and dividends sit in a separate PDF. Because they saved contract notes and a tax-lot sheet through the year, the figure reconciles in minutes instead of a scramble.
How to spot it
- ·contract notes not saved anywhere
- ·gain figure taken from the app with no backup
- ·dividends and corporate actions not logged
- ·no lot-by-lot sheet reconciled with the CAS and AIS
Your own paper trail · Record-keeping for tax and disputes