Finance Automation: Track Stocks and Real Estate in One Dashboard

Why Automate Your Financial Tracking?

Most investors track their portfolios manually — logging into brokerage accounts, copying numbers into spreadsheets, trying to remember where they put the real estate figures. It takes time, it is error-prone, and it only happens when you feel motivated.

The result: you make financial decisions with stale data. You do not notice trends until they have already cost you.

This guide builds an automated financial dashboard that keeps itself updated. By the end you will have:

• Live stock price tracking for any ticker in your portfolio
• Real estate metrics tracked in one place (rental income, expenses, equity estimates)
• Portfolio performance calculations that update automatically
• A weekly email summary delivered every Monday morning

Important disclaimer: This guide is for personal financial tracking and education only. Nothing in this guide constitutes financial advice. All investment decisions carry risk and should be made with the guidance of a qualified financial advisor. Automated tracking tools do not guarantee investment performance.

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Step 1: Set Up Your Google Sheets Dashboard

Create a new Google Sheets file. Name it Portfolio Dashboard.

Create three sheets (tabs at the bottom):

Sheet 1: Stocks
Set up these columns:

Column	Header	Description
A	Ticker	Stock symbol (e.g. AAPL, MSFT)
B	Shares	Number of shares you hold
C	Purchase Price	Your average cost per share
D	Current Price	Auto-updated by Make
E	Current Value	Formula: =B*D
F	Gain/Loss $	Formula: =E-(B*C)
G	Gain/Loss %	Formula: =(D-C)/C
H	Last Updated	Auto-updated by Make

Sheet 2: Real Estate
Set up these columns:

Column	Header
A	Property Address
B	Purchase Price
C	Current Estimated Value
D	Mortgage Balance
E	Equity (=C-D)
F	Monthly Rental Income
G	Monthly Expenses
H	Monthly Net Cash Flow (=F-G)
I	Annual ROI

Fill in the real estate data manually — we will update the estimated values monthly via Make.

Sheet 3: Summary
This sheet will display totals pulled from the other two sheets:

• Total stock portfolio value
• Total real estate equity
• Total net worth estimate
• Weekly change

Screenshot placeholder: Google Sheets with all three tabs configured

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Step 2: Get Your Alpha Vantage API Key

Alpha Vantage provides free stock price data via API. Go to alphavantage.co and sign up for a free API key.

The free tier allows 25 API requests per day — enough for a portfolio of up to 25 stocks if you update once per day. For larger portfolios or more frequent updates, a paid plan is available.

Copy your API key. You will need it in Make.

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Step 3: Build the Make Scenario

Open Make and create a new scenario.

Module 1 — Schedule (Trigger)
Add a Schedule module. Set it to run every weekday at 4:30 PM — after US markets close, so prices reflect the final trading price of the day.

Module 2 — Google Sheets (Get Stock List)
Add a Google Sheets module. Select Get Range Values and pull column A from your Stocks sheet — this gives you the list of tickers to update.

Module 3 — Repeater (Loop Through Tickers)
Add a Repeater module to loop through each ticker returned by the Sheets module.

Module 4 — HTTP Request (Fetch Stock Price)
Add an HTTP Request module inside the repeater loop.

Set the URL to:

https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=GLOBAL_QUOTE&symbol={{ticker}}&apikey=YOUR_API_KEY

Replace {{ticker}} with the ticker variable from the repeater and YOUR_API_KEY with your Alpha Vantage key.

The response will include the current price in Global Quote → 05. price.

Module 5 — Google Sheets (Update Price)
Add a Google Sheets module set to Update a Row. Match the row by the ticker symbol in column A and update:

• Column D (Current Price) with the price from the API response
• Column H (Last Updated) with the current timestamp

Screenshot placeholder: Make scenario showing all five modules connected

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Step 4: Add the Weekly Email Summary

Add a second scenario in Make for the weekly email.

Module 1 — Schedule
Set to run every Monday at 7:00 AM.

Module 2 — Google Sheets (Get Summary Data)
Pull the summary values from your Summary sheet — total stock value, real estate equity, net worth, weekly change.

Module 3 — Email (Send Summary)
Use Make’s Email module or connect your Gmail account.

Compose an email using the data from the Summary sheet. A simple template:

Subject: Your Weekly Portfolio Summary — [DATE]

Good morning,

Here is your portfolio update for the week ending [DATE]:

STOCKS
Total Value: $[TOTAL_STOCK_VALUE]
Weekly Change: $[WEEKLY_CHANGE] ([WEEKLY_CHANGE_%])

REAL ESTATE
Total Equity: $[TOTAL_RE_EQUITY]
Monthly Cash Flow: $[MONTHLY_CF]

COMBINED NET WORTH ESTIMATE
$[TOTAL_NET_WORTH]

View your full dashboard: [GOOGLE_SHEETS_LINK]

This is an automated summary for tracking purposes only.
Nothing here constitutes financial advice.

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Step 5: Activate and Test

Activate both scenarios. Manually run the stock update scenario once to confirm prices are populating correctly.

Check your Stocks sheet — column D should now contain live prices and the gain/loss columns should be calculating.

Send a test email to confirm the weekly summary is formatting correctly.

Common issues:

• API rate limit error: Alpha Vantage free tier limits to 25 requests per day. If you have more than 25 stocks, either upgrade or batch the updates across two scenarios running at different times.
• Wrong row being updated: Make sure your Sheets module is matching on the ticker symbol, not the row number.
• Email not sending: Check that your email connection in Make is properly authorised.

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Extensions to Consider

• Add crypto prices: CoinGecko has a free API with no key required — add a second loop for crypto holdings.
• Add property value estimates: Zillow and Redfin do not have official APIs, but you can manually update estimated values monthly using their websites, then let Make handle all the calculations.
• Add a budget tracker: Connect your bank’s CSV export (most banks support this) to a fourth sheet and have Make categorise and total your monthly spending automatically.
• Add alerts: Set up a Make filter that sends you an immediate email if any stock drops more than 5% in a single day.