Assalaamu Alykum Everyone,
I wanted to open up this thread to gather any questions people might have about Zakat. If you’re not familiar with the basics of Zakat or would appreciate a quick refresher, check out the video below by the good folks at zakat.com with the help of @Joe.
If you’re wondering about calculations, check out brother @M.Abdullah’s thread.
Is there about Zakat you’d like to learn? Is there a resource about Zakat you find useful? Let’s share
I just take 2.5% of the money I have in the bank and stocks. And try to be safe by rounding upwards just in case.
Then I start giving it away from Ramadan of that year to the next. I use the Money Manager app to keep track and filter the data in Excel periodically to see whether I’ve exhausted the amount for that year. If so, I start the next year.
I know this is a crude way, but it’s the best system I could come up with. Hoping to learn better ways from you guys, InshAllah 
can you simplify this for someone who has a robhinhood account and is just in it for the long term:
https://www.zakat.com/question/do-i-pay-zakat-on-stocks-shares
When you say exhausted the amount for that year what do you mean by that?
Jazak Allah khair
You can pay zakat in advance of when it is due. I believe what he meant, as I do this myself, is track how much you give for zakat throughout the year (intention and zakat eligibility is important here). Once the day comes zakat is actually due, if you paid out more than was due by that point, you could count that as a credit towards the next years zakat, or otherwise you’d donate the remaining balance due. I’m no sheikh or mufti this is just what I heard from some source that seemed legit. There are opinions that you can’t do this, but I chose to go by the opinion that made sense to me. You should do your own research either way. May Allah accept.
If you have appreciated stocks in a taxable account and don’t have a DAF, do yourself a favor and Google donor advised funds. You can donate stocks to a DAF you create, it gets sold there, then you can route it to your favorite zakat eligible charity. You won’t pay capital gains tax and if you happen to itemize deductions you can save even more in taxes. If you have little to no capital gains tax and take standard deduction, then there is no point in a DAF but keep that in mind if that changes in the future.