Earmark vs. tracking goals in a spreadsheet
A lot of disciplined investors already do goal-based tracking by hand, in a spreadsheet they built themselves. It's a genuinely reasonable approach. Here's where it holds up, and where it quietly starts costing more time than it saves.
Where a DIY spreadsheet genuinely works
A well-built spreadsheet can do almost everything a goal-mapping tool does: list every fund, tag each one to a goal, and total up progress against a target. If you're comfortable with formulas and disciplined about updating it, there's no functional ceiling — you have complete control over the categories, the assumptions, and the layout.
For investors with a handful of funds and one or two goals, this is often genuinely the fastest option — no new tool to learn, no account to create, and total control over exactly what gets tracked and how.
Where it starts to break down
The cracks tend to show up as the portfolio grows, not at the start. A few specific failure points come up repeatedly:
- Manual re-entry every time you check it. Every new SIP instalment, every switch, every fresh CAS means retyping numbers by hand — which is exactly the kind of repetitive task where a transposed digit or a missed row quietly corrupts the total without anyone noticing for months.
- XIRR formulas are easy to get subtly wrong. Computing a correct XIRR across irregular SIP dates, switches, and partial redemptions requires getting every cash flow's sign and date right — miss one redemption or get a sign backwards, and the number looks plausible while being wrong.
- It goes stale exactly when it matters most. The spreadsheet is only as current as the last time you sat down and updated it — which, in practice, tends to be right after a portfolio review, not right before one, when you'd actually want current numbers.
- No memory of why a fund was assigned to a goal. A cell says "Retirement." It doesn't say why that fund's horizon and risk profile fit retirement rather than the house-down-payment goal — that reasoning lived in your head when you built the sheet, and it's the first thing that's lost when you revisit it a year later.
- Single point of failure. A lost file, a corrupted save, or simply forgetting the tracking sheet exists after a laptop change — none of these are hypothetical; they're the ordinary way long-running personal spreadsheets quietly stop being maintained.
What changes with a CAS-based tool
Earmark's starting point is the same one a good spreadsheet uses — every fund you actually own, from your CAS — except re-uploading a fresh CAS replaces re-typing rows by hand, and the return calculation is computed directly from the transaction history in the file rather than a formula you maintain yourself.
The other difference is what persists: the reasoning behind each goal assignment is shown and editable, not just implied by a cell's label, so it's still legible a year later — to you, or to anyone else who needs to understand the plan. Neither approach is "wrong." A spreadsheet is a genuinely capable tool in the hands of someone willing to maintain it; Earmark exists for the version of this problem that's outgrown manual upkeep.
Common questions about spreadsheet-based tracking
Keep exploring
See what your own mutual funds are actually funding.
Earmark reads your CAS and maps every fund you already own to a goal — free to start.
Get started free