Greenline + Wealthsimple

Wealthsimple is one of the most popular brokerages in Canada, and for good reason. Commission-free trades, a clean app, and a low barrier to entry. If you’re using Wealthsimple to invest, you’ve made a solid choice.

But Wealthsimple shows you Wealthsimple. If that’s your only brokerage and your only account, that might be enough. For a lot of Canadian investors, though, reality is messier.

What does Wealthsimple do well?

Wealthsimple makes investing simple. You can buy and sell stocks and ETFs without paying commissions. The app is clean, the onboarding is fast, and they support TFSAs, RRSPs, FHSAs, and non-registered accounts.

They also offer managed portfolios (Wealthsimple Invest) for people who want a hands-off approach. Their cash account pays competitive interest. And their tax filing tool is genuinely useful.

For buying and holding investments, Wealthsimple is excellent.

Where does it get complicated?

The challenge comes when your financial life isn’t contained in one app.

Maybe you have a Wealthsimple TFSA and an RRSP at your bank from before you switched. Maybe your spouse uses Questrade. Maybe you have a group RRSP through work. Maybe you’ve been meaning to consolidate but haven’t gotten around to it.

Wealthsimple can only show you what’s inside Wealthsimple. It can’t show you:

• Your total net worth across all accounts
• How your combined portfolio is allocated (not just one account)
• What you’re paying in fees at other brokerages
• Whether your overall investment mix matches what you think it is
• Your adjusted cost base across brokerages (for tax reporting)

That’s not a criticism of Wealthsimple. No brokerage shows you a view of accounts held somewhere else. That’s not their job.

How does Greenline fill the gap?

Greenline sits on top of all your accounts. You upload your Wealthsimple CSV export (or PDF statement), then upload statements from your other brokerages, and Greenline combines everything into one view.

You get:

• One dashboard for every account at every brokerage
• Fee analysis that shows what you’re actually paying across all your investments
• Net worth tracking that includes your full investment picture
• Holdings deep dive that breaks down your real allocation by region, sector, and asset class
• Tax reporting with ACB tracking across brokerages

Greenline doesn’t replace Wealthsimple. You keep trading where you trade. Greenline just makes sense of the full picture.

Do you need both?

If all your investments are at Wealthsimple and you’re happy with their built-in view, you might not need Greenline right now. Wealthsimple’s app does a good job showing what you hold and how it’s performing within their platform.

But if any of these sound familiar, Greenline adds something Wealthsimple can’t:

• You have accounts at more than one brokerage
• You want to see your total net worth, not just one account
• You want to understand your fees across all your investments
• You need ACB tracking for tax season
• You want a daily summary that covers everything, not just one platform

How to get started?

If you’re a Wealthsimple user, you can export your activity as a CSV from the Wealthsimple app. Upload it to Greenline, and your holdings are imported automatically. The whole process takes a couple of minutes.

From there, add your other accounts and you’ll have the full picture.