Choosing how to import: spreadsheet vs bulk-row vs broker-total

PropStax gives you three ways to backfill historical data, and they’re not interchangeable. Pick the one that matches what you actually have, not what sounds most thorough.

Quick comparison

Path	Use when	Get	Lose
Upload a spreadsheet	You have per-account dates, amounts, and outcomes	Per-account ROI, individual outcomes, full broker breakdown	No daily charts / no trade-level history
Bulk-create by row	You know “I had N of these and N of those” but not per-account specifics	Account counts per broker, lifecycle stats, aggregated cost rollups	No per-account breakdown of which won/lost what
Broker-total cost/payout	You don’t want to recreate historical accounts at all	Lifetime net cash flow per broker	No account-level analytics for the historical period

Scenario A — You have everything

Situation: You’ve been a careful record-keeper. Your spreadsheet has one row per account: account ID, broker, start date, account size, outcome, every reset fee, every payout. Maybe even per-trade history.

Use: Upload a spreadsheet.

Why: This is the only path that gets you per-account analytics for historical data. The wizard maps your spreadsheet columns to PropStax account fields, creates one account record per row, and attaches your costs and payouts to the right accounts.

What you get:

The lifetime totals table on Reports → Lifecycle & Portfolio shows every historical account individually with its own net P&L.
The Firms tab on Reports reflects the full picture.
Each historical account has a clickable detail page (though analytics tabs will be empty since there are no daily snapshots).

What you DON’T get: Daily trade-by-trade data. Imported accounts have no snapshots so the equity curve and analytics cards on the Account detail page will be empty. The account record + financial entries are there; the day-by-day chart isn’t.

Effort: Highest. You need a spreadsheet in the template format. If your current sheet is structured differently, it is a copy-paste-and-tidy job before upload.

Scenario B — You know totals but not per-account specifics

Situation: You remember the shape of it — “I bought 20 evals of the same size in Q1, 14 were blown, 5 closed, 1 passed and is now funded” — and you know roughly what you spent in total. What you do not have is a record per account.

Use: Bulk-create from scratch + log costs separately.

Why: Bulk-create lets you describe groups. Each row in the wizard is one outcome — 20 evals of that size marked blown, 5 marked closed, 1 marked passed. PropStax generates the account records for each group.

For the costs, you have a couple choices:

Add the cost per row in the bulk-create wizard, if you know what one account in that group cost — the row multiplies it across the accounts it generates.
Or add costs in bulk after the accounts exist, attributing them to the broker or specific accounts.

What you get:

Account counts per broker on the Brokers page (so the lifecycle funnel and “evaluations attempted” totals are accurate).
Per-broker total spend on Reports.
A rough net cash flow that reflects what you actually spent and were paid.

What you DON’T get: Per-account financial breakdowns for the historical accounts (since you didn’t have per-account data to enter). The lifetime totals table on Reports will show your historical accounts but with identical specs within each group.

Effort: Middling. One wizard pass per broker, plus the cost entries.

Scenario C — You just want net cash flow, no account stubs

Situation: You have been trading prop firms for years and you know your lifetime totals — what you spent and what you were paid — but not the per-account breakdown. You do not want past per-account analytics; you want PropStax to know the totals so that going-forward analytics start from the right baseline.

Use: Broker-total mode in Add cost and Add payout directly. Skip Import entirely.

Why: Broker-total mode lets you log a single cost or payout against a broker as a whole, no account tied to it. One entry per broker covers all your historical spend; one entry covers all your payouts. PropStax doesn’t need to know about the individual evaluations.

Steps:

Go to Financials → Add cost → pick the broker → Mode = Broker total → enter the lifetime total spend → date can be today or backdated.
Repeat for Add payout with the lifetime total received.
Repeat for each broker.

What you get:

Accurate net cash flow on the Dashboard tile + Financials page.
Every total on Reports, with the broker’s own row on the Firms tab even though you hold no accounts with it; an entry that names no broker shows on the Not linked to an account line.
A clean slate going forward — new accounts from this point on get tracked normally.

What you DON’T get: A card on the Brokers page, rows in the lifetime totals table, or anything on an Account detail page for the historical period. There are no account records, so a broker-total entry counts in the totals but belongs to no account. You’re trading detail for speed.

Effort: Lowest. Two entries per broker.

When in doubt

If you’re not sure which path fits, ask: “Do I want PropStax to show me past per-account ROI, or am I happy with past lifetime totals only?”

Past per-account ROI matters → Scenario A.
Past per-broker totals are enough → Scenario B or C.
Just want to start fresh, baseline the money already moved → Scenario C.

You can also mix: Scenario A for one broker where you have full records, Scenario C for another where you don’t. PropStax doesn’t care if your import strategy varies by broker.