Getting started with ZenLedger is easy! In order to complete accurate tax reports, and eliminate any accounting issues in your account, we HIGHLY recommend doing the following:
Gather a list of ALL the exchanges and wallets you have ever used in the past, even for prior years.
Make sure you follow our import instructions exactly. Incorrectly importing your data outside of our recommended methods will lead to inaccurate data, and incomplete/incorrect tax reports. We provide detailed instructions, as well as articles for each of our supported exchanges, wallets, custom CSV imports, and manual entries.
After Importing, click "Next Step" and "Tax Calculation". To ensure that it has been imported, Review Your imports under your "Imports" tab, and "View Imported History".
Do not try to resolve any issues in your account until you have imported everything. You will continue to see issues until everything has been imported, and all of the pieces of the big puzzle come together.
Start by watching the video walkthrough below.
Importing Exchanges
We recommend importing your exchanges first. Start with making sure you have your passwords and devices for Two-Factor Authentication. Some sites do 2FA with SMS, some with Google Authenticator, and some with Authy - you would have set this up when you set up the account with the exchange. To import your exchanges, you will click the "Imports" tab at the top of the page, select "Add Account", and navigate to the exchanges you wish to import from our list of exchanges. Don't see your exchange on the list? We will cover how to import those later in this article.
Importing Wallets
Once all of your exchanges have been completely and correctly imported, you can move onto your wallets. To import your wallets, you will click on the "Imports" tab, "Add Account", and navigate to the wallets tab on the far right.
Some popular wallets have special instructions, so be sure to review the instructions if there are instructions listed for that wallet. Here are a few examples of special instruction wallets:
If your wallet isn't listed in the scrolling list on the left side, you can import it under "Others", as long as the token is listed on our drop down menu.
If your altcoin is not listed and it is an ERC-20 coin, you can use your public Ethereum receive address to import the coin.
If your coin is not ERC-20 and is not listed among the exchanges, wallets, or tokens we support, you will still need to import that source by either creating a Custom CSV or using Manual Import to import the transactions involving these tokens. More information about this is below.
Reviewing imported transactions
To review your imported transactions, you will select the "Imports" tab at the top of the page, and select "View Imported History." This will show you what was imported, and when.
Importing via Custom CSV and Manual Entry
If you have an exchange that is not supported by API or CSV upload, you can create a custom CSV to import.
If you have a wallet that is not supported by the import methods above, you might need to create a custom CSV (if more than a handful of transactions) or you can enter manually. Manual entries are also useful for reporting stolen or lost coins if the loss/stolen outgoing transaction doesn't already appear in your account.
Click here to read about how to create a manual entry (with video instructions).
Click here to read about how to create a custom CSV (with video instructions).
Troubleshooting Self-Transfers, Missing Price, and Missing Imports
After you have imported all of your data and believe you have imported everything, you may still see items on your 8949 that don't look right to you.
All coin to coin trades are treated by the IRS as a sale of the original (outgoing) coin and an acquisition of the new (incoming) coin. Depending on your accounting method (FIFO, LIFO, or HIFO) you may have a capital loss or gain on the disposition of the original coin and this will be reported on the 8949.
More about cryptocurrency taxation here.If we see an outgoing without a corresponding incoming, this would appear as a sale. If this was actually a self-transfer, then we likely have either a missing wallet, or a wallet that is not reported in UTC and/or has a timestamp of the incoming after the outgoing transaction. Example for the latter: You have 1 BTC outgoing from Coinbase at 8:30am UTC but your wallet shows incoming 7 hours earlier at 1:30am in your timezone - this would not match as a self transfer and would need to have the timestamp edited to make sure the incoming is after the outgoing.
More about editing self-transfers here.
Most of the time when there is a missing source, our system will flag these issues. Once you have everything completely and correctly imported into ZenLedger, you can begin troubleshooting the issues in your account using our Resolution Center.