Lineage/How it works
The mechanics
Four things happen. Then they keep happening.
Most tools ask you to become a data-entry clerk for your own money. This one asks you to forward what you already receive. The work after that is ours, and it doesn’t stop when the season ends.
The setup
From a folder of PDFs to a balance sheet.
There is no long onboarding, no chart of accounts to design, no six-week implementation. You start with whatever you have to hand — last year’s documents are a perfectly good beginning — and the picture deepens as more arrives.
Nothing has to be complete before it’s useful. A half-built picture already answers questions no spreadsheet in your family has ever answered.
You send what you already get
Most households are usable after four documents
Broker and custodian statements. Grant letters and vesting schedules. Fund notices and capital-call letters. Loan statements. Property papers. The annual information statement. Forward them by email, drop them in, or authorise a connection where one exists.
- PDF, scan or photo — a phone picture of a paper statement is fine
- Password-protected statements are handled; you supply the password once
- Nothing has to be renamed, sorted, or entered into a form first
- Documents for your spouse and parents sit in the same household, kept separable
We read it, then argue with it
Reading a document is the easy part. The part that matters is refusing to trust what was read. Every extracted balance has to rebuild line by line from the transactions on the same page and land exactly on the closing figure the document itself prints.
If it reconciles, the figure is proven and enters your net worth as fact. If it doesn’t, it is held back, flagged, and shown to you with the reason — never quietly averaged into a headline number.
- Proven and estimated are separate totals, always
- Two documents that disagree get surfaced, not silently overwritten
- Every figure keeps a link back to the page and the date it was true
The governance checks run on their own
Every time your family’s picture changes, the structural checks re-run. Not as an annual review you have to book — as a background property of the system. Missing beneficiaries, mismatched names, concentration, single points of failure, stale permissions.
You get a short list of things that are wrong and fixable, in priority order, with the specific holding named. See the full checklist.
Compliance falls out of it
Once a reconciled picture exists, the obligations are arithmetic performed on it. Instalments and estimated payments computed from your actual position rather than last year’s. Realised gains as they happen, not discovered in June. Foreign holdings already recorded in the shape disclosure requires.
The return at the end is a by-product. It is the smallest thing this platform does, and it is the only thing most tools do at all.
The operating year
Twelve months, not three weeks.
The old cycle builds the most complete picture of your family’s wealth every single year and then destroys it. Here is what the same twelve months look like when the picture is permanent — in your tax year, not somebody else’s.
The dates differ by country and the platform carries the local calendar. The shape of the problem does not change: the picture is assembled once, under deadline, then thrown away. Nothing below requires you to remember anything.
| When | How it goes now | How it goes with Lineage |
|---|---|---|
| January–February | Forms arrive in a trickle. You have no idea which ones are still coming. | Each form lands in the picture as it arrives, and the ones still missing are named. |
| March | A K-1 shows up late and changes the answer you already reached. | The revision is reconciled against what was there before, and the delta is shown. |
| April | Filed under deadline. The folder closes and the picture disperses. | The return is generated from what is already reconciled. The picture carries forward. |
| April & June | Estimated payments guessed from last year, or missed entirely. | Each instalment computed from your live position and flagged before the date. |
| July–December | Gains realised, options exercised, property sold. Recorded nowhere. | Each event lands with its tax consequence attached, while there is still runway. |
| September & January | Two more estimated payments nobody reminds you about. | Both computed and flagged, from a position that has stayed current all year. |
Read automatically: W-2, 1099s, consolidated broker statements, K-1s. Ordinary case for an individual. Extensions, state filings and safe-harbour rules vary.
| When | How it goes now | How it goes with Lineage |
|---|---|---|
| April–June | New tax year begins. Last year is over and the picture has already dispersed. | The picture carries forward intact. Opening positions are already the closing ones. |
| 31 July | A payment on account falls due. Based on last year, whether or not that still fits. | Computed against your live position, so an over- or under-payment is visible early. |
| August–November | Gains realised and allowances unused. Both discovered far too late to act on. | Position and allowance headroom tracked as the year runs, while there is still runway. |
| December | Nothing happens, which feels fine and is the actual problem. | Governance checks run quietly. Timing decisions still have room to move. |
| January | Six portals, one drawer, and a filing deadline on the 31st. | The return is generated from what is already reconciled. You review, you don’t rebuild. |
| 31 January | Balancing payment plus the first payment on account, both landing at once. | Both known weeks earlier, from figures that reconciled when the documents arrived. |
Read automatically: P60, P11D, broker and fund statements, pension statements. Ordinary case for an individual filing online. Paper deadlines and agent schedules differ.
| When | How it goes now | How it goes with Lineage |
|---|---|---|
| April–May | Last season is over. The folder closes and the picture disperses. | The picture carries forward intact. Opening positions are already the closing ones. |
| 15 June | The first advance instalment falls due. Nobody mentions it until it is a penalty. | Computed from your live position and flagged before the date, not after. |
| July | The return is assembled under deadline, from whatever can be found in time. | Generated from what is already reconciled. You review rather than rebuild. |
| 15 September | A second instalment, and a threshold you crossed without noticing. | Both computed as the year runs, so neither is a surprise in March. |
| October–December | Gains realised and positions changed, recorded nowhere in particular. | Each event lands with its consequence attached, while there is still runway. |
| 15 December & 15 March | The last two instalments, then the year closes and everything is lost again. | Flagged in advance, and the picture survives into the next year intact. |
Read automatically: AIS, Form 26AS, Form 16, consolidated account statement. Ordinary case for a non-audit individual. Audited cases and agent schedules differ.
| When | How it goes now | How it goes with Lineage |
|---|---|---|
| July–August | New income year begins. Last year has already dissolved back into inboxes. | The picture carries forward. Opening positions are already the closing ones. |
| September | Fund distribution statements arrive and sit unopened until October. | Each is read as it arrives and reconciled against the fund’s own totals. |
| 31 October | Self-lodgers hit the deadline having assembled everything in a fortnight. | The return is generated from what is already reconciled, weeks earlier. |
| November–February | A PAYG instalment falls due, based on a position that may have moved. | Computed against your live position rather than last year’s assumption. |
| March–May | CGT events happen with no view of the year’s overall position. | Gains and holding periods tracked as they occur, while timing still matters. |
| 30 June | The year ends. Anything not done by now cannot be undone. | Year-end actions surfaced in advance, from a picture that stayed current. |
Read automatically: Income statements, annual tax statements, managed fund distributions. Ordinary case for a self-lodging individual. Registered agents have extended schedules.
Straight answers
The questions people actually ask.
Do I have to connect my bank accounts?
No. Documents alone are enough — the platform was built document-first precisely because connections don’t exist for half of what families own. There is no feed for a property, a gold holding, an unlisted stake or a grant letter.
Where a connection is available and you want the convenience, you can authorise one. Every figure is labelled with where it came from either way.
How is this different from a net-worth tracker?
A tracker shows you a number. It has no opinion about whether the number is right, no record of where it came from, and nothing to say about whether the structure under it holds.
Lineage refuses to show a figure it can’t reconcile, keeps proven and estimated apart, and runs structural checks that a tracker has no concept of.
Is Lineage filing my taxes or managing my money?
Neither. Lineage produces the picture, the assessments and the estimates. When you need filing done, advice given, or legal paperwork drawn up, you bring in a verified professional — your own, or one from the platform — and grant them scoped, time-bound access.
They deliver the service. We keep the record straight. We never sit between you.
What about my spouse, my parents, the family business?
A household is the unit, not an individual. Holdings can sit with one person, be held jointly, or belong to a parent whose affairs you help manage — each visible in the family total and separable when it needs to be.
Businesses that household members own sit alongside the personal picture, so entity and personal numbers finally reconcile against each other.
What if a document is wrong, or two of them disagree?
That case is expected, not exceptional. Conflicts are surfaced with both sources shown side by side and the dates each was true. You decide which one governs, and the decision is recorded so it doesn’t have to be made twice.
Can I get everything back out?
Yes, at any time, in full, without asking anyone. Export the documents you supplied and the structured picture built from them. Deleting destroys the encryption keys, not just the rows. How that works.
Start with last year’s folder.
It’s the most complete picture your family has ever assembled. Don’t throw it away again.