In this tutorial, we show you how to enter free shares in Parqet. For different kinds of free shares, we recommend different ways of adding them:

Various brokers give you shares, for example when you open a brokerage account or for referring friends.

Your first step should be to check the broker’s statement for how it states the entry price (your price per share, excluding fees) of the shares you received. This way, your Parqet portfolio matches your real portfolio as closely as possible.

At the broker Trade Republic, for example, free shares come with buy and sell documents that contain a regular entry price. Our Autosync and PDF import pick this up automatically. If you’d like to record the buy manually, enter the number of shares and the price of the security as stated in the document.

The broker Finanzen.net Zero, on the other hand, books free shares in at €0. In this case, you can choose the type “Transfer in” and the purchase price “€0” in Parqet:

We recommend following your own broker’s records here to make sure everything is displayed correctly. If your broker doesn’t provide a corresponding document, we recommend entering the security at the closing price on the day it was booked in, with the type “Buy”. With a transfer in at €0, the entire value of the shares counts as price gain. This makes your portfolio’s return and IRR (internal rate of return) too high, while the TTWROR (true time-weighted rate of return) stays correct.

Note: How gifted shares are treated for tax purposes depends on the individual case. Please ask your broker or a tax advisor.

At some companies, it’s common for employees to be “given” shares by their employer or to get them at a discount. You can track this case in Parqet, too.

Some employers offer “share matching”: After a certain holding period, you’re given a certain number of shares.

An example: You get employee shares from Amazon. One share currently costs €120. If you buy 8 shares yourself, your employer gives you 4 more shares.

Bought yourself: €120 per share * 8 shares = €960.

Received as a gift: €0 per share * 4 shares = €0.

On average, you’ve invested €960 for 12 shares.

The first option is to enter the gifted shares as a transfer in at €0 and the shares you bought at the actual entry price:

The second option is to enter the shares at an average price. In the example above, you spent €960 in total for 12 shares. This gives an average entry price of €80 per share. You can enter this value as the entry price in the transaction:

You received shares entirely as a gift without buying any yourself? Then jump to the section “Receiving shares entirely as a gift”.

Let’s say your employer issues employee shares at a reduced price. One share normally costs €100. As part of the employee share program, you get 10 shares at €90 each (instead of €100).

In this case, enter the discounted entry price (of €90) in Parqet with the type “Buy”. You can already include any taxes due (e.g. on the non-cash benefit) in the buy activity.

Let’s say your employer gives you 20 shares every year. In this case, too, you have two options for entering these shares in Parqet:
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With the first option, you enter the 20 shares with an entry price of €0 using the type “Transfer in”. The downside of this method: The entire value of these shares counts as price gain. This makes your portfolio’s return and IRR too high, while the TTWROR stays correct. For the position itself, Parqet doesn’t show a price gain in %, because no percentage can be calculated from €0.
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With the second option, you enter the 20 shares at the price they were worth on the stock exchange at the time of the gift, with the type “Buy”. In this case, you treat the shares you received economically like a “cash gift” followed by an investment in shares.
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We recommend following the actual statements of the executing bank. In Parqet, enter the amount at which the bank booked the shares into your portfolio and displayed them. If the bank states a booking price of €0, use the type “Transfer in” with a price of €0 in Parqet. If the displayed price is close to the actual market price at the time of purchase, we recommend entering the shares with the type “Buy” and the corresponding entry price. Please keep in mind that gifted shares are essentially a kind of cash bonus. The booking price should therefore reflect the market price rather than €0.
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Note: The discounted or gifted shares may have to be taxed as a non-cash benefit. In Germany, this tax is usually deducted via your payslip. Of course, you can also enter this tax in your transactions in Parqet. If you have further questions about tax treatment, please contact your employer or a tax advisor.

If you’re given or inherit securities (e.g. from your family), you also receive the original entry prices. Since these sometimes can no longer be looked up, we offer several ways to record the securities.

Let’s take the following example:

Your parents bought Apple shares on January 1, 2016, at a price of €100. Let’s say the current value of the shares is €150. On January 1, 2023, they give (or leave) these securities to you.

If you want to be very precise and still have your parents’ transaction data, transfer it to your own Parqet portfolio as is. After all, the broker passes these (tax-relevant) acquisition details on to you. With this transaction data, our calculations are most accurate.
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Let’s say you don’t have access to the transaction history. In this case, enter the new shares as a “Buy” or “Transfer in” on the date of the transfer, at the entry price shown by your broker. If you know that the shares were bought further back, you can also enter a past date of your choice here.
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This option can cause distortions in the performance chart. An example: You enter a transaction stating that a share was worth €10 on January 1, 2000, but in reality it was worth €50 that day. This results in a price performance of 400% for that day. So it helps to use as accurate a date as possible.
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If you enter a date in the past, please note: For shares that have had stock splits, you must enter the historically correct entry price, not the entry price shown today.
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Example: In 2021, you could buy Amazon at €2,600 per share. Historical charts on stock market websites, however, show the price as €130. That’s because Amazon carried out a 20:1 split in 2022. In Parqet, you enter the original buy at €2,600 per share.
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In theory, gifted shares can be added at a price of €0 (type: Transfer in; price: €0). We advise against this because it reflects reality neither for tax purposes nor economically. In addition, the entire value of the shares then counts as price gain, and your portfolio’s return and IRR are too high. Keep in mind: The shares were a gift or an inheritance. Economically, that’s the same as being given an amount of money that you use to buy the shares. Even then, the entry price is never €0.

In a spin-off, shareholders additionally get new shares booked into their brokerage account. For example, in December 2021, shareholders of Daimler AG received one Daimler Truck Holding share for every two Daimler shares. Parqet handles such spin-offs automatically.

Parqet splits your acquisition costs by the number of shares: Every old and every new share gets the same entry price. In the Daimler example, after the spin-off you have 3 shares for every 2 Daimler shares. Daimler Truck therefore gets one third of the acquisition costs. Your broker or the tax office may split them differently. Learn more: Centrally managed security events.

No. Parqet adjusts the acquisition costs of the original share (here Daimler AG) so that the performance after the spin-off is correct. If you hold Daimler AG in your portfolio on the day of the spin-off, Parqet automatically books in Daimler Truck and calculates the entry price.

If you’ve already added Daimler Truck yourself (manually or via import), Parqet uses your entry and doesn’t book it in again. For this, your transfer in must be no more than 14 days before or after the spin-off. Parqet then reduces the invested capital of Daimler AG by the amount of your transfer in.