My portfolio value looks wrong

If the total value on your Dashboard or Holdings page doesn't match the number you had in your head, the first thing to know is that it's almost always one of a small handful of explanations, and almost never an actual bug in the math.

Gold Silver Ledger does its valuation arithmetic the same way every time, from a small number of inputs you can inspect directly. So the question isn't usually "is the app wrong?" — it's "which input am I not looking at?"

This article walks through those inputs in roughly the order they account for "looks wrong" reports, from the most common to the least.

The single most common cause is the portfolio scope at the top of the app. The selector is global — whichever portfolio (or "All Portfolios") it's set to applies across the Dashboard, Holdings, Analytics, and Reports.

If it's pointing somewhere other than where you expect, the total you're seeing is the total for that scope, not for everything you own.

A quick check:

For background on how the selector behaves across the app, see Switching between portfolios and What a portfolio is.

The second most common cause is currency. Gold Silver Ledger stores everything in USD internally and converts to your chosen display currency on the fly.

If your display currency is set to something other than what you were comparing against, the total you see won't match the total you were doing math against in your head.

A quick check:

If switching the display currency makes the number look right, the original "wrong" total was correctly computed — it just wasn't in the currency you thought it was. See Choosing your display currency and How currency conversion works.

If the portfolio and currency are both right but the total is still slightly off from what you'd expect, glance at the spot cards on the Dashboard. If one of them is carrying the amber stale indicator, the value of holdings denominated in that metal is being computed against a slightly older quote than the live market.

This is rare, and the effect is usually small — a minute or two of lag on a single metal's feed. But it does mean the headline figure is briefly off from a fresh market quote until the next refresh lands. The longer walkthrough is in My spot prices are showing as stale.

The next thing to verify is that the inventory underpinning the total actually matches what you own.

If you spot something missing or misfiled, Recording your first transaction and Editing a transaction after the fact cover the fix.

Holdings totals count only held items, not sold ones. If an item is showing as SOLD in your inventory when in reality you still have it, it isn't contributing to the total.

A few ways this can happen:

To check, open Holdings and use the status filter (or look at the Transactions page for SELL entries). If a sale shouldn't have happened, you can delete the SELL transaction and the affected items will be restored to held — see Deleting a sell transaction.

If you've ruled out the previous five, the fastest next step is to pick a single item and verify the arithmetic yourself.

For a standard product:

current value = weight (fine metal content) × current spot in USD

So for a 1 oz American Gold Eagle at a gold spot of $4,700, the held-item value is about $4,700. Multiply by your display currency's FX rate if you're not looking at USD.

For junk silver, the math is different — face value × the junk-silver multiplier × current silver spot. The longer explainer is in How junk silver melt value is calculated. A roll of pre-1965 quarters won't match a "10 troy oz × spot" calculation, because the actual silver content isn't 10 troy oz.

A note on purity: weight in Gold Silver Ledger is the fine metal content of an item, not its gross weight. So purity isn't a separate multiplier in the live-value formula — it's already baked into the weight figure on each item.

See Understanding melt value for the deeper explanation. If you've been multiplying by purity yourself in your head-math, that's probably where the difference is coming from.

If the per-item math checks out, multiply across your holdings and you should land on the same total the app is showing.

A surprisingly common cause of "the number looks wrong" turns out to be a comparison between two different numbers that aren't supposed to be the same.

These two figures will almost always differ. They're meant to. If you bought a 1 oz Gold Eagle in 2022 for $1,950 and today's gold spot is $4,700, the cost basis is $1,950 and the current value is around $4,700. Neither is wrong; they're just different views of the same item.

So if your "expected" total is the sum of what you paid (cost basis) and the app's total is current value, the gap between them is your unrealised gain — not a bug.

If you sell, the difference between the two becomes the realised gain on the Annual Report. Until then, both numbers are valid and serve different purposes.

If you've been using custom products (your own catalog entries for items not in the built-in catalog), the live value of those items is computed from the weight, purity, and calculation method you entered yourself. Bad input there will produce a bad total.

A common mistake is entering gross weight (the whole coin) instead of fine metal content. For example, a one-ounce sovereign weighs about 7.99g gross but contains about 7.32g of fine gold.

If you entered the gross weight, the app will value the coin against the gross figure and overshoot.

Open the custom product on the Catalog page and double-check:

Editing the custom product corrects the values for every existing inventory item that points to it.

If you've gone through every step above and the figure still doesn't make sense, that's worth flagging. A note to [Contact support] with the portfolio scope, display currency, one or two example items and the value you'd expect them to show, and the value the app is actually showing, is enough for us to dig in.

Real valuation bugs are very rare. But "very rare" isn't "never," so we're glad to look if you're convinced something's off after the triage.