SMSF record keeping options in 2026: six ways trustees keep the books, and what each one actually holds

Every SMSF trustee already runs a record keeping system. Some just have not chosen it deliberately. The ATO requires accounting records that explain the fund's transactions and financial position to be kept for at least 5 years, and minutes, investment strategy documents and trustee consents for at least 10. Something in your life is currently doing that job, even if the something is a drawer.

This is a buyer's guide to the six real options, with prices read from each vendor's own pages on 29 August 2026. The options are not interchangeable, because they keep different things. A performance tracker and an admin service can both be the right answer, for different trustees, in the same year. We sell one of the six, and we have tried to be plain about where the other five win.

Option 1: spreadsheet plus shoebox

The default. A workbook holds the holdings and a folder, physical or a Dropbox, holds whatever paper survived the year. Cost is zero and control is total, which is why a large share of funds still run this way.

What it keeps is whatever you remember to put in it. The failure mode is not the spreadsheet, which is honest about being manual. It is the gap between the spreadsheet and the evidence: the June scramble when the accountant asks for the dividend statement behind row 40 and the email that carried it is three address changes ago. Auditors do not accept a cell reference as proof of a transaction.

Suits best: a trustee with a small, stable fund, a disciplined filing habit, and time in June. If your fund is two ETFs and a term deposit and you genuinely file the paper the week it arrives, a spreadsheet costs nothing and does the job. That trustee exists and this article is not trying to talk them out of it.

Option 2: portfolio trackers (Sharesight, Navexa)

Trackers answer a different question: how are the investments doing. Sharesight (from free for 1 portfolio and 10 holdings, then $9 to $49 per month AUD on annual billing, prices read 29 August 2026) imports trades from 200 plus brokers, computes performance, and produces a tax pack with CGT and franking figures. Navexa (AU$20 to AU$99 per month, read the same day) plays the same position with parcel-level CGT selection and franking capture, and markets itself hard at tax time.

Both are competent at what they claim. Sharesight can even receive forwarded contract notes by email and book the trade within minutes, which sounds adjacent to what we do. The difference is what survives: the trade is recorded, and the document that proved it is a by-product, pinned to the trade if it arrives at all. A tracker has no place to put a bank statement, an actuarial certificate, a valuation, or a signed minute, no concept of the fund's compliance deadlines, and no year-end evidence pack for the auditor. Sharesight tracks what you bought. We keep the proof.

Suits best: a trustee who wants performance analytics and CGT reporting, full stop. If that is the itch, buy a tracker and not us; we do not compute portfolio performance and are not going to pretend otherwise. Many funds sensibly run a tracker alongside whatever keeps their records.

Option 3: DIY ledger software (BGL Trustee Edition)

BGL's Simple Fund 360 is the platform most accountants use to administer SMSFs. The Trustee Edition sells that same double-entry engine directly to one fund: $320 one-time plus $280 per year ex GST, maximum one fund, prices read from bglcorp.com on 29 August 2026.

This is the most complete DIY option on the list. You get a genuine fund ledger, document management, and financial statements from the same machinery a practice would use. The honest caveat is that it is practice software, priced for trustees but shaped for professionals: double-entry processing, chart-of-accounts decisions, and year-end journals are yours to drive. The trustees who thrive on it tend to be bookkeepers, accountants running their own fund, or people who enjoy that layer.

Suits best: a trustee who wants to do the actual accounting themselves and has the appetite for professional-grade software. At $280 a year it is also the cheapest way to own a full ledger, if you can drive it.

Option 4: full SMSF admin services

At the other end, you can outsource administration entirely. eSuperfund currently offers the first financial year free and then $999 per year, with the ATO supervisory levy and other extras on top. Stake Super charges $990, $1,690 or $2,490 per year depending on asset types. Heffron, at the full-service end, runs $3,195 to upwards of $4,375 per year including the audit. All prices were read from the providers' own pages on 29 August 2026, and each provider lists additions that can apply, so treat the band as roughly $1,000 to $3,000 plus per year.

For that money the service does the books, the statements, the return and usually arranges the audit. The trade is control and rhythm: most of these services collect your documents through an annual checklist, which means the fund's records exist properly once a year, after the fact, inside the provider's system. Many also work best when your investments sit on their preferred platforms.

Suits best: a trustee who wants administration off their plate entirely and accepts the provider's process. If the whole appeal of record keeping software is that you would rather not do record keeping, this is the honest answer, at ten to sixty times our price.

Option 5: accountant only

The quiet majority. No software, no service: the fund's accountant reconstructs the year each winter from whatever the trustee brings in. It works, in the sense that returns get lodged, and the accountant relationship carries real value beyond data entry.

Two costs hide in it. The first is the accountant's time, billed at professional rates, spent chasing and sorting paper rather than exercising judgement; trustees often meet this as a fee that creeps up each year. The second is that the fund is effectively unrecorded for eleven months. A contribution cap breach or a deadline missed in October surfaces the following June, when the fixing options have narrowed. We wrote about what the auditor ultimately needs to see at smsfcore.com/blog/franking-evidence-smsf-audit, and almost none of it is generated in June; it arrives all year and either gets kept or does not.

Suits best: a trustee with a simple fund and an accountant they trust, who accepts the June ritual as the price of not thinking about the fund the rest of the year. If that is you, the cheapest upgrade is a better shoebox and the discipline to feed it, before any software enters the picture.

Option 6: SMSF Core

We are the record keeping layer for trustees who keep self-administering. One plan, $49 per month or $490 per year, a 30-day trial with no card, and exports free always: BGL Simple Fund 360, Class and CSV formats, on every plan, during the trial, and after you leave. If you stop paying, the account goes read-only and nothing is deleted.

The product is a trustee-owned evidence inbox with an approval gate and year-round watchers. Your fund gets a private email address you own. Forward the broker note, the bank statement, the valuation, and it is classified and filed against the fund year as evidence, with nothing booked until you approve it. Because the records build through the year, deadline and cap watchers run against them as documents arrive, and June becomes an export instead of an excavation. Your accountant stays exactly where they are; what changes is what reaches them.

What we do not do, so this list stays honest: we do not compute portfolio performance or benchmarks, we are not a broker, we do not prepare or lodge the annual return, and we do not replace the audit or the accountant. A trustee who wants any of those wants a different row of the table below.

The table

Option	What it keeps	What it costs (read 29 Aug 2026)	Who it suits
Spreadsheet plus shoebox	Whatever you file, when you file it	$0	Small stable fund, disciplined filer, time in June
Portfolio tracker (Sharesight, Navexa)	Trades, performance, CGT and franking reports	Sharesight free to $49/mo; Navexa AU$20 to AU$99/mo	Trustee who wants performance analytics and tax reports
DIY ledger (BGL Trustee Edition)	A full double-entry fund ledger you operate	$320 once plus $280/yr ex GST	Trustee happy to do real accounting in practice software
Full admin service (eSuperfund, Stake, Heffron)	The provider's books, statements, return and audit	Roughly $1,000 to $3,000 plus per yr	Trustee who wants administration fully off their plate
Accountant only	Whatever survives to the June handover	Accountant's annual fee	Simple fund, trusted accountant, tolerance for the ritual
SMSF Core	Year-round evidence file, approval-gated, export-ready	$49/mo or $490/yr, 30-day trial, free exports	Self-administering trustee who wants the records kept as they happen

Choosing between them

Ask what you actually want to stop doing. If the pain is not knowing how the investments performed, buy a tracker. If the pain is doing any administration at all, buy a service. If the pain is the June excavation, the chased paper, the deadline you found out about late, that is record keeping, and it is the one job on this page that we built for. Whichever way you go, choose deliberately; the drawer is also a system, just the worst one.

Fees and inclusions above were read from each provider's public pages on 29 August 2026 and change without notice; check the provider's own site before relying on any figure. SMSF Core is an information tool, not a licensed financial service. Talk to a licensed adviser or your accountant before acting.