Tracking an EIS portfolio in a spreadsheet: the columns you need, and where spreadsheets break
Tero team
The team behind Tero
2 min read
Updated 27 August 2026
SEIS & EISPortfolio strategy
Key takeaways
- Fourteen columns cover it. Company, company number, scheme, dates, amounts, certificate status and UIR, claim status, and the three computed dates: claim-by, three-year, and two-year IHT.
- The spreadsheet's enemy is events, not structure. Certificates arriving, companies dissolving, rounds repricing - the sheet only knows what you remember to type.
- Dissolutions are the expensive gap. A struck-off company appears in the register and nowhere else. A spreadsheet cannot notice; the loss-relief deadline runs anyway.
Most UK angels track their EIS positions in a spreadsheet, and a good one gets you a long way. Here is the structure that actually works, followed by an honest account of where it stops working.
The columns
Per holding:
Company name and company number (the number is what lets you check the register; names change).
Scheme - EIS or SEIS - and advance assurance seen? (yes/no).
Investment date and share issue date (they differ; the issue date starts the clocks).
Tax year the investment belongs to (mind the 6 April boundary) and whether you carried back.
Amount subscribed, shares, and price per share.
Certificate status: received / chased on [date] / outstanding - plus the UIR once you have it.
Claim status: claimed in [tax year] / not yet claimed.
Three computed dates: claim-by (five years after the 31 January following the tax year), three-year date (clawback ends, CGT freedom begins), and two-year date (inheritance-tax relief, within the post-April-2026 allowance regime - see the 2026 rules).
Add a conditional-format rule that turns a row red when a certificate is outstanding past six months or a claim-by date is inside eighteen months, and you have a genuinely serviceable system.
Add a conditional-format rule that turns a row red when a certificate is outstanding past six months or a claim-by date is inside eighteen months, and you have a genuinely serviceable system.
Where it breaks
Three failure modes, and every experienced angel has met at least one:
Events happen off-sheet. The spreadsheet records what you knew when you last opened it. Certificates arrive (or don't), companies raise again at new prices, founders stop replying - none of it updates a cell by itself.
Dissolutions are silent. A company that fails does not email its shareholders. The strike-off notice is published at Companies House and nowhere else, and the loss-relief claim has a deadline that runs whether or not you noticed. This is the single most expensive gap in every angel's spreadsheet.
Nobody maintains it. The sheet is perfect for the first five positions, wobbly at ten, and abandoned by fifteen - precisely as the sums at stake get bigger.
The automated version
The fix is not a better spreadsheet; it is connecting the record to the register so events update it. Tero's tax relief tracker holds the same columns - certificates, UIRs, clocks, claim windows - and fills them from Companies House filings: share issues price your holdings, strike-offs raise loss-relief flags, and the clocks compute themselves. The first hundred on the waitlist use it free. For the one-off arithmetic - relief, true downside, CGT - the calculator stands alone. Information, not tax advice.
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