Importing a DeGiro CSV export

The two exports, and why the choice matters

DeGiro's web platform can produce several CSV files, and two of them are useful to a portfolio tracker. They are not interchangeable.

The distinction people regret later is this: a Portfolio export tells a tracker what you hold, but not what you paid or when. Import only that, and your profit-and-loss figures start from today — every holding looks like it was bought this morning at the current price. All historical performance is gone, and so is every dividend you have already received.

How the file is recognised

You do not have to tell Portfolio On Fire which export you picked. It reads the header row and works it out, because the two files have different columns:

• An Account statement is identified by a description column — Omschrijving in Dutch exports, Description in English ones — alongside Product and a date column (Valutadatum, Datum or Date).
• A Portfolio export has Product together with a quantity column (Aantal or Quantity) and no description column.

Both language variants of every column are recognised, so you do not need to switch your DeGiro interface to English before exporting. The columns read from an account statement are the product name, the description, the value date, the time, the quantity (Aantal / Quantity), the price (Koers, Prijs or Price) and the total consideration (Tegenwaarde, Bedrag, Waarde, Amount or Value).

The number-format trap

This one is worth understanding even if you never use this app, because it silently corrupts data in tools that handle it naively.

An English DeGiro export writes numbers US-style: 1,234.56, and 117.48. A Dutch export writes them EU-style: 1.234,56 — and, critically, writes a thousands-only value as 1.674.

Look at 1.674 in isolation and it is ambiguous. Read it as English and it is one point six seven four. Read it as Dutch and it is one thousand six hundred and seventy-four. A tool that inspects each value individually and guesses will read some rows correctly and others wrong within the same file, producing a portfolio that is subtly, invisibly incorrect — a holding off by a factor of a thousand, sitting next to nine that are fine.

Why you get asked to confirm tickers

DeGiro's CSV exports identify holdings by product name — free text like "ASML HOLDING" or "VANGUARD FTSE AW". They do not contain ticker symbols, and they do not contain ISINs in a form that maps cleanly to a market data provider.

That is a genuine limitation of the file, not of the importer, and it has a real consequence: something has to turn "VANGUARD FTSE AW" into a symbol that prices can be fetched for. Portfolio On Fire matches on normalised product name and then shows you what it resolved, so you can correct anything it got wrong before it is committed.

It is worth a moment's attention. A wrongly matched ticker does not fail loudly — it fetches prices for the wrong instrument and looks entirely plausible while doing so. Dual-listed shares and similarly named ETFs are the usual culprits.

Importing again later

Most people import once and then wonder what happens in three months when they have bought more. Re-importing an overlapping account statement is safe: transactions carry order IDs, already-imported IDs are remembered, and rows that have been seen before are skipped rather than added again.

This means the practical routine is simply to export a fresh account statement whenever you want to catch up and import the whole thing. You do not need to carefully select a date range to avoid overlap — overlap is handled. An import can also be run from a chosen start date against your existing positions, which is useful when you only want to top up recent activity.

Existing holdings are merged rather than replaced. Data the CSV does not carry — your own tags, list membership, notes, and the logos DeGiro exports never include — survives the import intact.

Step by step

1. In DeGiro's web platform, export your Account statement as CSV (or the Portfolio export if you only want a quick snapshot). Pick a date range that reaches back to your first purchase.
2. Get the file onto your device — email it to yourself, or save it to your cloud drive and open it from the Files app.
3. In Portfolio On Fire, open the import screen and select the CSV. The export type is detected automatically.
4. Review the resolved tickers. Correct any that look wrong, paying attention to dual-listed shares and similarly named ETFs.
5. Confirm. Positions, cost basis and dividend history are built from the transactions.

Troubleshooting

The file is not recognised at all

The header row is what identifies the file, so the usual cause is a CSV that has been opened and re-saved in a spreadsheet, which can rewrite the header or change the delimiter. Re-export from DeGiro and import the original file without opening it first.

Quantities look wrong by a factor of a thousand

That is the number-format issue above, and it means the file's language was misread. Re-export and import without editing the file, since editing it in a spreadsheet can change the number formatting to match your system locale rather than the export's.

A holding resolved to the wrong company

Correct the ticker at the confirmation step. If it has already been imported, correcting the symbol on the holding re-points the price lookup; the transaction history stays attached.

My broker is not DeGiro

Any portfolio you can export as JSON from a previous version imports directly, and manual entry detects countries, currencies and tickers for you. Native parsers for other brokers are added based on what people ask for — tell me which one you use.