Physical gold and silver are priced automatically in Capitally. Add them using the built-in XAU (gold) and XAG (silver) symbols, and the position value follows the market from then on — no manual price updates.
The one thing to get right is the unit. XAU and XAG are quoted per troy ounce, while most bars and coins are sold in grams.
Adding a metal
Add metals the same way you add a stock: click + Add and search for XAU (gold), XAG (silver), XPT (platinum) or XPD (palladium). They are on Capitally's supported currency list, so prices are fetched for you and quoted per troy ounce. Where a metal has no direct quote in the currency you are viewing, Capitally routes through one that does.
Record a Buy transaction for each purchase, with the quantity in troy ounces and the price you actually paid — in the currency you actually paid in, which doesn't have to match the currency the metal is priced in.
Capitally treats metals as currencies, not commodities
XAU and XAG are currency-type assets — that is what makes their prices automatic. The practical consequence is classification, not behaviour: out of the box they land in the Cash category, the Government/Central Bank/Currency sector and the Other region, so a bar of gold sits next to your cash in an allocation chart. If that is not how you think about it, reassign the asset's taxonomies on its Taxonomy tab. Being a currency does not hide them: the Liquid assets filter excludes Art, Estate, Valuable, Venture, Private Equity, Loan, Mortgage and Other — metals are in.
Don't use the Collectibles recipe for bullion
Tracking Collectibles tells you to create a Valuable or Art custom asset and update its market price yourself. That is right for a painting or a watch — and wrong for bullion. XAU and XAG prices are automatic, and Valuable and Art positions are excluded from the Liquid assets view.
Converting grams to troy ounces
One troy ounce is 31.1035 grams. Divide the weight of the bar or coin by 31.1035 to get the quantity to enter. Fractional-ounce coins need no conversion at all — a 1/4 oz Krugerrand is simply 0.25.
Physical form | Quantity to enter |
|---|---|
1 oz coin | |
1/2 oz coin | |
1/4 oz coin | |
1 g | |
10 g coin | |
100 g bar | |
1 kg bar | |
Worked example — a 100 g bar bought for $10,000:
- Quantity: 100 ÷ 31.1035 =
3.215072 - Price per troy ounce: that is $100 per gram, and $100 × 31.1035 =
3110.35
Enter those two numbers in the Buy transaction, and the position is worth 3.215072 × the current gold price for as long as you hold it. Keep the decimal places on the quantity — rounding 3.215072 to 3.2151 values that one bar about nine cents high, and the error scales with the holding.
XAU and XAG — so the gram conversion is yours to do once per denomination.Counting in whole bars and coins
If you would rather enter 1 for one bar than 3.215072 for its weight, put a Price Formula on the asset. price * 3.215072 makes the displayed price the price of one 100 g bar, so quantities become whole bars, and pricing stays automatic.
This needs a custom asset. The gold you add straight from the currency list is a currency-type asset, and currencies have no Prices tab — which is where the formula lives. So create an asset of your own for the denomination and point it at the gold price instead:
- Turn on Price Formulas under Settings → Early Access.
- Click + Add, choose create a custom asset, and name it for the denomination — "100 g gold bar", say.
- On its Prices tab, set Source prices using this market symbol to
XAU-USD. - In the Price Formula field below it, enter
price * <weight in troy ounces>—price * 3.215072for a 100 g bar,price * 0.321507for a 10 g coin. - Record the
Buywith the quantity in bars and the price you paid per bar.
Entering quantities in troy ounces is the simpler of the two by some distance. The formula is worth the setup only if you think in physical units and want to count bars rather than weight.
One asset per denomination
A Price Formula belongs to the asset, so it defines a single unit. If you hold 100 g bars and 1 oz coins and want to count both in whole units, create a separate asset for each denomination — or keep everything on the one XAU asset and enter quantities in troy ounces.
Grouping coins, bars and combibars
Record each coin, bar or combibar purchase as its own Buy transaction, then use Tags to see totals by metal and by form. Tags nest with /, so Metal/Gold, Metal/Silver, Form/Coins and Form/Bars give you both breakdowns from the same transactions.
Cost basis behaves exactly as it does for stocks: a partial sale draws from the oldest lots first under FIFO, or follows whichever cost basis method you have set for the project, account or asset.