Creating a profit/loss report

rotki creates a profit/loss report (called PnL for short) for you based on your trades and other events and the provided accounting settings. This is essentially a calculation of profit or loss for all your events based on the given dates. Before getting into the details of generating a report, here's a few important details regarding the report generation algorithm:

• By default, rotki uses an accounting strategy called "First In - First Out" (short: FIFO). There are plans to implement other strategies (e.g. "Last In - First Out").
• rotki allows users in jurisdictions offering a tax free holding period (e.g. Germany with 1 year) to specify the period in days. To adjust this value, see the section accounting settings.
• When generating a report for a custom period, where rotki is aware of the user's previous crypto holdings (e.g. we trade BTC between the years 2017 - 2019 but we ask for a report between 2018 - 2019), it takes all prior crypto holdings into account to calculate a starting balance for the given period. For example, say you traded BTC between 2017 - 2019 with a balance of 0.1 BTC on December 31, 2017. When generating a pnl report for 2018 - 2019, rotki will take the 0.1 BTC from December 31, 2017 as a start balance for its calculations in the period of 2018.

How to run the PnL report

To create a PnL report click on the "Profit and Loss Report" button from the left menu. Choose a period for the report (or click on Custom to set a custom time range) and press on "Generate" to start the report.

The calculation may take some time. You can also see a summary of the accounting setting the report is running with in the "Accounting settings" section.

If you encounter any problems during the profit/loss report check out the PnL report creation problem section.

In the report screen you can also see any previously generated profit and loss reports, and manage them. Free users are limited to 20 stored reports in total.

Results of the PnL report

Once done you have an overview of the profit/loss for the given period, how much of that is taxable, and how much each taxable event category contributes to the total.

Additionally below the overview you get a table containing all of the events that were taken into account in the calculation along with how much of the profit_currency you lost or gained through that event.

Finally you can get a CSV export by pressing the "Export CSV" button. This export is meant to be imported into Google Sheets. Press the button and then choose a directory to write the CSV files to. Once done you can import the CSV files into Google Sheets via its import menu.

IMPORTANT

CSV export only works for the latest report generated in the active session.

Following are definitions for the all_event document's columns

• type is a string describing the type of event a user engaged in, e.g. in "I buy ETH for EUR", buy is the type.
• location is a string describing the location the event occurred at. For example "kraken" for kraken trades.
• asset is a string identifying the asset an event was paid in, e.g. in "I bought 1 ETH for 100 EUR", EUR is the asset.
• free_amount: is a number specifying the amount of asset that won't be taken into consideration for tax purposes.
• taxable_amount: is a number specifying the amount of asset needed to be taken into consideration for tax purposes according to the accounting settings, e.g. "I sold 1 ETH for 120 EUR", 1 ETH is the taxable_amount.
• timestamp is a string containing the date and time an event was executed.
• price is asset price in profit_currency at the time the event was executed.
• pnl_free is a number describing the amount of asset converted to the user's profit_currency that won't be taken into consideration for tax purposes.
• pnl_taxable is a number describing the amount of asset converted to the user's profit_currency. Note that rotki additionally subtracts an exchange's trading fees from this number.
• cost_basis If this is a spending event, this field contains information about where the amount that is spent came from according to the user's setting. Which buys contributed to this spend. If not enough information is known then this is also stated.
• notes Information about the event.

Note: To learn more about profit_currency or to adjust it, see the section change profit currency

Results from past profit and loss reports are saved so the user can later review them without the need to run a new execution.

Cost basis

Cost basis is a really important aspect of accounting. For each sell event it lets you know what was the price at which the sold asset was acquired depending on a number of settings.

Cost basis is calculated in rotki for all trades/events we support. Trades/events that rotki recognizes are:

• All trades performed in our supported centralized exchanges
• All trades done in our supported AMMs. As of this writing this is uniswap, sushiswap, balancer.
• All manual trades inserted by the user.

For all those trades you can see the cost basis when you create a profit loss report by:

1. Either navigating to the trade in the generated table after the PnL report and pressing the arrow to show more details.

2. Export the report to CSV and import it in a spreadsheet tool. We have tested it works with google spreadsheets and libreoffice. The cost basis column contains the info you seek.

PnL report creation problems

No documented acquisition found

It's possible that rotki is not able to find an acquisition event for a sale. In which case it will warn you and ask you to fix it.

This can happen for many reasons. The asset may have been acquired in a non-supported exchange/protocol, some event not detected etc.

The way to fix it is to add either a manual trade to tell rotki how you acquired that asset or an acquisition history event.

Error when importing CSV formulas to Google Docs

This is caused by the different Google Doc language configurations. Simply change the language on Google doc to United States. This can be done in File > Spreadsheet settings > General > Locale

Timeout or price not found for timestamp

It's possible that rotki is not able to find the price of assets. You have to input the price manually, otherwise the event will be skipped from pnl reports. For example if you are creating a GBP profit/loss report and the asset is GNO then make sure to create the GNO -> GBP historical price cache. You can add the prices on the spot, or open manage historical price cache.

The result of the generated PnL report is not what you expected.

The results of the generated PnL report can vary depending on the accounting settings. Check if any settings align with unusual treatments for your events, so you can adjust the settings to resolve the issue yourself.

If you have any question or are confused about the settings, feel free to send us a message on Discord.

Seeking help with complicated errors during PnL report generation

It's possible that many errors could occur during the PnL report generation due to certain event(s) not accounted for properly. In such a scenario if all else fails, exporting the PnL debug data allows us to fully replicate the issue encountered and find a solution.

Note: Only share PnL debug data with the developers as it may contain sensitive information.