Hedger vs Google Sheets

Where Sheets is great

• Free, forever. No subscription. If zero cost is a hard requirement, Sheets wins before the conversation starts.
• Total flexibility. Custom columns, formulas, logic. No app matches a blank spreadsheet on pure expressiveness.
• Your file, your data. Export to Excel, CSV, archive, print. No lock-in — the file stays readable even if Sheets shut down tomorrow.
• Transparent by construction. Every formula is visible. You wrote it, you can audit it. No black boxes.
• GOOGLEFINANCE for prices. Built-in for most listed tickers — delayed and limited, but good enough for a daily glance.

Where Sheets gets painful at scale

The pain points that led the founder to build Hedger after a few years of keeping his own spreadsheet for IBKR, Degiro and Fio:

• A different CSV shape for every broker — IBKR Flex XML, Degiro's account statement, T212's activity CSV, Fio's PDF-to-CSV, XTB's reports. Each has its own columns, date format, event types.
• Manual FX for every row. Czech tax uses CNB daily rates, not GOOGLEFINANCE. You end up importing the CNB XML, writing VLOOKUP per trade date, and handling weekend/holiday fallbacks.
• FIFO across brokers is fragile. Move a position between brokers, do a partial close, get assigned on an option — formulas break in subtle ways and tax numbers drift.
• Corporate actions rewrite history. Splits, ISIN changes, mergers, delistings — each one means adjusting past rows. Forget one and your 5-year return chart has a cliff.
• Dividend WHT routing. Gross / WHT / net per payment, per tax year, per broker — a nontrivial spreadsheet.
• Options barely fit. Premium, assignment, expiry, rolled positions need their own event model. Most Sheets templates skip them.
• Tax report is a separate chore. Even with numbers right, the Czech §8/§10 summary is hand-built.
• Performance past a few thousand rows. Open/edit becomes slow, especially with volatile formulas like GOOGLEFINANCE.

What Hedger automates from that list

• Broker CSV/XLSX import — IBKR (Activity + Flex), Degiro, T212, Fio, XTB normalized into one ledger
• CNB daily FX rates, loaded automatically per trade date
• FIFO lot matching with full audit trail; per-broker or cross-broker
• Corporate actions — splits, ISIN changes applied to historical quantities and cost basis
• Dividend routing — gross / WHT / net per payment, per tax year
• Per-position return attribution — Price / FX / Income / Fees / Deposits / Taxes
• Czech tax report — FIFO, 3-year time test, daily/yearly FX choice, mojedane.cz XML export
• Drill-down — every number on every screen links back to the CSV row it came from

What Sheets still wins at

• Custom logic. Want to model a scenario Hedger doesn't support — a hedging overlay, a niche asset class, a what-if rebalance? Sheets lets you build it the same day. Hedger only exposes the calculations its authors have written.
• File-level portability. A .xlsx in your Drive is a file you back up, email, open in Excel or LibreOffice. Hedger has CSV/XLSX export per table, but the "file" is a view of the database, not the database.
• Zero ongoing cost. Hedger is free during the open beta — won't last forever. Sheets stays free regardless.
• You are the engine. In Sheets, you wrote every formula, so you understand every number by construction. Hedger aims for the same clarity via drill-down — verify-by-reading-the-trail instead of verify-by-writing-the-formula.

In short

Stick with Sheets if you enjoy building your own models, have a simple setup (one broker, few trades), or want to avoid any third-party tool between you and your data. Power users with years invested in a good sheet should keep it.

Try Hedger if you're tired of maintaining per-broker parsers, hand-matching FIFO lots, and filling in CNB rates — and you want every figure traceable back to a specific CSV row.

Use both: the founder still keeps a high-level Sheets view (total value, quarterly changes, FX) and uses Hedger for detailed tracking, attribution and tax. Hedger isn't trying to replace the spreadsheet you already trust; it's trying to feed it numbers that match your broker.