Trade records and reconciliation
How to Import Trades to a Trading Journal
Start with the destination journal’s supported format, then prove that a small export produces the right positions and results. A CSV extension alone does not establish compatibility. The checks below help you find mapping mistakes before they affect an entire trading history.
Prepare, map, test, then reconcile
- 1
Check the journal’s accepted format
Find the journal’s current instructions for your broker and report type. Check whether it expects executions, orders or closed trades, and whether your account supports that import. Keep live fills separate from paper trades and backtest results.
- 2
Preserve the source export
Keep an unchanged copy with its account, date range, export settings and time zone. Work on a duplicate. Include the opening position or earlier entry fills when the review period starts with an open trade.
- 3
Map meaning before renaming columns
Identify timestamps, instruments, side, quantity, prices, costs and IDs. Preserve leading zeros in identifiers and verify decimal/date formats. Do not invent missing prices, times or fees to make a file pass validation.
- 4
Test a deliberately small set
Use a closed winner, a closed loser and a partial exit. Review the preview or a disposable test journal where the destination supports one. Confirm how to remove that test batch before submitting it.
- 5
Reconcile before importing the archive
Compare accepted and rejected records, quantities, remaining positions and costs by account and currency. Inspect duplicate handling for overlapping exports. Keep a batch log with file name, covered dates and reconciliation result.
An execution is not a completed trade
One order can produce several fills. A position can stay open after a partial exit, and a journal can group fills differently from a broker statement. Decide what one row represents before comparing counts.
For example, Tradervue’s generic format is execution-oriented: its documentation specifies Symbol, Quantity and Price, with date/time and side conventions. It does not require a pair of entry/exit prices on every row. Its supported date formats exclude day-first dates; the import time zone is selected separately. Follow that contract only when using that importer.
| Record | What it represents | Check before mapping |
|---|---|---|
| Execution | A single fill with a timestamp, side, quantity and price. | Several fills can belong to one order or position. |
| Order | An instruction that may fill partly, fully or not at all. | Do not treat requested quantity as executed quantity. |
| Closed trade or lot | A matched entry/exit quantity under a stated grouping rule. | An open remainder is not a completed loss or zero-result trade. |
Write a field map you can inspect
Keep the raw value alongside the mapped value when converting a file. A label such as P&L is insufficient: record whether it includes fees, whether it is realized, and which currency it uses.
| Field group | Record explicitly | Common failure |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | Account alias, instrument/contract, execution ID and source file. | Deduplicating by ticker alone removes legitimate fills. |
| Time | Execution date/time, source zone and destination zone. | Settlement date or spreadsheet locale shifts the trading day. |
| Side and quantity | Buy/sell convention, sign rule, unit and contract multiplier. | A signed quantity plus an extra direction sign reverses the result. |
| Price and currency | Per-unit price, quote currency and any FX conversion rule. | Changing a currency label does not convert the amount. |
| Costs | Fee sign, fee currency, whether net P&L already includes fees. | Subtracting an included fee again understates the result. |
| Status | Matched quantity, remaining position and corrections. | A rejected or partial record silently becomes a closed trade. |
Worked example: three fills, one completed position
Fictional long equity example, one account and one currency, no opening position, multiplier 1. Fees below are positive costs; there are no other cash flows. These rows illustrate reconciliation and are not an import file for a particular vendor.
The three executions buy 10 units and sell 10 units. Gross result is (110 − 100) × 4 + (95 − 100) × 6 = 10. Total fees are 1 + 0.4 + 0.6 = 2, so the completed position nets 8. After the second row, 6 units remain open; the position is not yet a completed winner.
A journal may show one grouped position or two matched exit lots. Either can be internally consistent, but their trade counts and win rates need not match. Compare the same grouping rule, closing quantity, costs and net result before comparing percentages.
| Execution | Side | Quantity | Price | Fee | Position after fill |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F-001 | Buy | 10 | 100 | 1 | 10 |
| F-002 | Sell | 4 | 110 | 0.4 | 6 |
| F-003 | Sell | 6 | 95 | 0.6 | 0 |
Investigate the discrepancy, then retry the batch
A successful upload only means the file was accepted. Reconcile a sample before trusting a dashboard. Do not assume every journal supplies a preview, a custom mapper, duplicate detection or a rollback control.
| Symptom | Inspect first | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Too many trades | Overlap between files, repeated IDs, summary rows and execution rows. | Deleting all repeated symbols. |
| Wrong day or order | Time zone, daylight-saving boundary, source time and parsed date. | Replacing absent execution time with a plausible time. |
| Wrong position size | Partial fills, opening inventory, contract multiplier and side signs. | Treating an order total as another fill. |
| P&L differs | Grouping, realized versus unrealized results, fees, currencies and corrections. | Comparing a closed-trade total with total account return. |
| Missing records | Rejected-row report, unsupported instruments and filters. | Assuming a missing row is an uneventful or zero-result trade. |
File import and broker sync have different requirements
A supported file importer does not establish that a broker API connection exists. Tradervue describes standard file upload and broker sync as separate methods, with sync availability depending on the broker. Use the destination’s current instructions rather than a broker-count comparison.
Pineify’s current Trading Journal Import History control is disabled and marked Coming Soon. Preparing a CSV or an Excel journal does not enable that control. Manual entry can document a reviewed result, but it is not an automated reconstruction of all underlying fills.
Frequently asked questions
Can I import any broker CSV into any journal?
No. Compatibility depends on the report structure, record type, fields, instruments and the destination importer. A CSV file is a container, not a shared trade schema. Check the exact supported export and test a sample.
Does Pineify currently import trade-history CSV files?
No. The current Trading Journal interface supports manual entry and marks Import History as Coming Soon. This guide and the linked spreadsheet do not add CSV or API import.
Should I fill in missing fees or execution times?
Keep missing information visible and obtain it from a reliable record where possible. Do not use zero for an unknown fee or invent execution times. A destination may supply defaults, so inspect how they affect grouping and statistics.
Can a backtest export be mixed with live executions?
Keep them in separate datasets. Simulated fills and their assumptions are different evidence from broker executions. Label the source and compare like-for-like populations.
Is matching total P&L enough to validate an import?
No. Check record counts, rejected rows, open quantities, currencies, costs and grouping as well. Offsetting errors can produce the right total with wrong trade-level results.
Continue with a reconciled sample
For a manual review, use the Pineify Trading Journal after checking its current fields. For a separate spreadsheet, inspect the Excel journal template and its calculation assumptions. Neither path adds automatic broker import.
Prepare an Interactive Brokers report
Published by Pineify, which sells trading software. Instructions use the linked official documentation; examples are fictional reconciliation exercises. No live broker account or third-party import was used to validate this guide. A matching sample tests data handling, not future trading performance.