Total Return

Getting started

Total Return shows how much your stock, ETF and mutual fund investments have really earned. It counts every purchase, sale, dividend, split and commission, and gives you your annualized return (CAGR) too.

The app has five tabs: Total, Portfolios, Stocks, Trades and Settings. On iPad the same screens appear side by side, with buttons in the toolbar. The Total screen is your overview: what your investments are worth, how much that changed today, your overall total return, and your CAGR.

Your investments are organized into portfolios, such as "401(k)" or "Brokerage". A portfolio holds positions, and each position is one stock in that portfolio. The same stock can be in several portfolios.

To get started:

1. On Portfolios, create a portfolio.
2. Open it and add a position. You can pick a stock you've already added, or add a new one right there.
3. Open the position and tap + to add its trades.
4. Go back to Total to see how your investments are doing.

Tips pop up on each screen the first time you need them.

To have prices update automatically, add your own free Tiingo key (see Automatic stock quotes). Without one, you type prices in yourself.

Total Return is free for low-volume use. Higher levels of use require a subscription (see Subscription).

Entering your trade history

Before you enter trades, decide what you want to measure for each portfolio:

• Your performance since you first invested. Enter every trade from your brokerage records: purchases, sales, dividends and splits. This takes longer, but the results are exact.
• Your performance from now on. Enter one purchase per position: today's date, the number of shares you hold now, and today's share price. It's quick, and it's often good enough for accounts like a 401(k) with many small contributions.

There's a middle path too. If you know your average price per share, enter that instead of today's price, and you get an approximate return since day one.

Example: you hold AAPL and KO in a 401(k), and AAPL and WFC in a brokerage account. Create two portfolios: "401(k)" with positions AAPL and KO, and "Stocks" with AAPL and WFC. Enter the full history for Stocks, and one summary purchase for each 401(k) position.

Automatic stock quotes with a Tiingo key

Total Return gets prices from Tiingo, using your own API key. A free Tiingo account is enough for most people.

1. Sign up at tiingo.com and copy your API key. The app's Get a Tiingo Key link takes you there.
2. In Total Return, go to Settings > Market Data > Quote Data Source.
3. Choose Tiingo and paste your key. The Status line shows Key verified once Tiingo accepts it.
4. Turn on My key is on a Power plan only if you pay Tiingo for a Power plan.

Tiingo Free vs Power

To refresh, pull down on a list, tap the refresh button, or shake your device. Tiingo's free plan allows 50 requests an hour and 1,000 a day. A single refresh covers up to 250 stocks per request, so normal use stays far below the limits. If you do reach a limit, the app says so and your prices update again later.

With Tiingo Free, prices aren't saved when you close the app, because Tiingo's free terms don't allow it. Prices and labels you type in yourself are always saved.

No key? Choose None (manual prices only) and enter prices by hand on each stock.

Data sourced by Tiingo.

Subscription

Total Return is free for low-volume use. Higher levels of use require a monthly or annual subscription, which also supports the app's development. Quote updates are never limited, with or without a subscription.

• Subscribe: Settings > Subscription > Subscribe.
• Restore a purchase on a new device or after reinstalling: open the subscription screen and tap Restore Purchases.
• Cancel: iPhone Settings > your name > Subscriptions > Total Return. The subscription renews automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.

If you reach the limit of free use without a subscription, you can still view, edit and delete your existing trades.

See the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Backups and moving to a new device

Total Return makes automatic backups on your device. You choose how often in Settings > Data Management > Auto Backup (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Annually or Never). Backups are always saved on the device, so if the device is lost or you delete the app, they're gone too, unless you keep copies in iCloud or email yourself a backup now and then.

Keep copies in iCloud

Turn on Settings > Data Management > Copy Backups to iCloud. Each new backup, automatic or manual, is then also saved in your own iCloud Drive, in the Total Return folder. Your other iPhone or iPad signed in to the same Apple Account sees those copies in its Backups list, and each one shows which device made it. To copy an older backup, tap it in the Backups list and choose Upload to iCloud.

To remove a copy, tap the backup and choose Remove iCloud Copy. Turning the setting off stops new copies; copies already in iCloud stay until you remove them. See the Privacy Policy for how iCloud copies are handled.

Make and email a backup

1. Go to Settings > Data Management > Backups (on iPad, the Settings button in the toolbar).
2. Tap + to create a fresh backup. It appears at the top of the list.
3. Tap the backup and choose Email to send it to yourself.

Restore, on the same device or a new one

• From email: open the email on the device, tap the attachment, and open it in Total Return.
• From the Backups list: tap a backup and choose Restore. This replaces all of your current data with the backup. A backup that's only in iCloud is downloaded first.

To move to a new device, make a fresh backup on the old device, then restore it on the new one. With iCloud copies on, install Total Return on the new device, sign in to the same Apple Account, and restore the backup from its Backups list. Otherwise, email yourself the backup and open the attachment on the new device. If you use a subscription, tap Restore Purchases on the new device. Backups don't include your Tiingo key, so if quotes don't update on the new device, enter the key again under Settings > Market Data > Quote Data Source.

If you wipe your data (Settings > Data Management > Wipe Database), the app offers to make a backup first.

Recording a stock split

If a stock's value suddenly drops (or jumps) with no matching change in its price, it has probably split (or reverse-split). Here's how to record it, using Apple's 4-for-1 split on August 31, 2020 as the example:

1. Go to Trades (on iPad, the Trades button in the toolbar).
2. Tap Edit, then +.
3. Tap the Split segment at the top.
4. Choose the portfolio and position, and set the date to August 31, 2020. The app fills in the shares you held on that date.
5. Enter 4 in split to and 1 in split from. The app calculates shares after.
6. Tap Done.

Why is my CASH balance a large negative number?

Until you add a CASH position to a portfolio, the app treats your purchases as paid for with outside money, and sale and dividend proceeds as leaving the portfolio. Once you add CASH, it pays for every purchase and receives every sale and dividend, going back to the start. That's why its balance can look very negative right after you add it.

You can fix this in two ways:

• Quick: add a Balance cash trade with the amount of cash in the account today.
• Precise: go back to when you opened the account, and enter every Deposit, Withdraw and Interest trade. That's worth doing if your cash earns interest, because the app then counts the interest in your total return.