When a client hands you a spreadsheet or a stack of broker statements, the adjusted cost base work usually still has to happen before filing—pooling identical securities across brokerages, documenting Canadian-dollar conversion for USD transactions, applying ETF return of capital, and reconciling the result against T5008 slips. myCostBase is built so that work is traceable when a client hands it to you.
What a client’s export gives you
- Accountant-Ready Tax Package — one PDF combining the Schedule 3 summary, realized disposition detail, current holdings, and T5008 broker reconciliation.
- Downloadable T5008 Reconciliation report — broker and T5008 figures compared against the calculated ledger, security by security, with an explanation for each difference.
- Full ACB Audit Trail report — every event that moved a security’s ACB, in date order, so a reported number can be traced back to the transactions that produced it.
- Detailed Superficial Loss report — denied losses and the resulting ACB adjustments, tracked automatically rather than reconstructed at filing time.
- CSV/spreadsheet exports — Schedule 3, Realized Gains Detail, Superficial Loss, Household Tax Summary, and T1135, for a client on the Investor Plus plan.
These reports are Investor Plus-plan features (Investor includes PDF reports, batch T5008 slip import, and interactive, manual T5008 reconciliation) — see Pricing for the current plan comparison.
Managing multiple clients
Each client is set up as a separate taxpayer, so pooled ACB calculations, T5008 reconciliation, and exports stay isolated per household — one client’s transactions never bleed into another’s pooled cost base. The Household Tax Summary export (Investor Plus plan) rolls up a single taxpayer’s spouse and dependants into one filing-ready view when a household files together, without merging separate clients’ individual ACB pools.
A year-end checklist before you file a client’s return
- Confirm every taxable account for the client’s taxpayer is marked correctly, with registered accounts excluded — see Getting Started.
- Resolve open import warnings (missing FX rate, missing transfer basis, unconfirmed security) before pulling the audit trail.
- Run the T5008 Reconciliation report and clear any unexplained broker-versus-ledger differences.
- Review the Superficial Loss report for denied losses that need an ACB adjustment carried forward.
- Export the Accountant-Ready Tax Package once the items above are clean, not before.
What’s in scope, and what isn’t
myCostBase reconciles T5008 slips — proceeds and book value — against the calculated ledger. It does not reconcile T3 or T5 slips, since those report trust and dividend income rather than dispositions and stay outside the ACB and capital-gains scope this product covers. A client’s T3 return-of-capital or reinvested-distribution amounts still need to be entered into myCostBase as ACB adjustments, manually or via CSV where the broker’s export includes them, so the pooled cost base reflects them even though slip reconciliation itself is T5008-specific.
How the numbers were calculated
Every figure in a client’s export traces back to the same rules—see ACB Calculation Methodology for the pooling formula, documented FX conversion, and ETF adjustment treatment. For the reconciliation workflow itself, see T5008 Reconciliation and Reports. For how a denied superficial loss becomes an ACB adjustment, see the Superficial Loss Rule in Canada.
myCostBase does not file a return or replace tax preparation software — see Product Limits and Scope for the full boundary. It produces the adjusted cost base and capital gains detail your client’s filing software still needs.