How PropStax counts money

Two metrics drive everything in Financials and Reports.

Net cash

PropStax adds up every payout you’ve recorded and subtracts every cost you’ve recorded, refunds netted against the costs:

Net cash = payouts received − spent

This is the Net cash tile on the Dashboard and in the Reports header, and the running total on the Financials page. Beside it, Payouts ÷ costs is the same two totals as a ratio, such as 1.80×; with nothing spent it reads no costs. With no cost or payout logged at all, Net cash shows a dash and no cash recorded rather than $0. It’s a lifetime figure by default; on Financials you can scope it to a period: a rolling window from one day to a year, all time, or this or last week, month or year.

Which rows count

One calculation feeds every cash figure PropStax shows — the Dashboard tile, Financials, every Reports tab and the Brokers page — so the same filter gives the same total everywhere. Under the ALL period, the Reports header’s net equals where the last bar of the Cash Flow tab’s Cash flow over time chart closes; a shorter period scopes that tab’s totals and charts while the header stays lifetime.

Every row in view counts once. Every cost and payout under the period and broker filters, including a row logged against a broker as a whole with no account. Where figures are split by account or by broker, a row with no account and no broker is shown as Not linked to an account, and a broker you have logged money against but hold no accounts with gets its own row. Where figures are split by account status or account type, every row with no account, whether or not it names a broker, is one group, No account.
Under one broker. A row counts under the broker of the account it is logged against; a row with no account counts under the broker it names. It never counts twice, even when the row names one broker and its account belongs to another. A row with no account and no broker stays in view whatever the broker filter says, since there is no broker to hide it with; the Firms tab shows it on its own line, apart from every broker’s figure.
Refunds. A cost in the Refund category comes off Spent by its amount, whether it was saved as a positive or a negative number. Any other cost saved as a negative amount reduces Spent too, and a payout saved as a negative amount reduces Received.
Costs with no date. A cost imported without a date of its own has no date in PropStax, rather than the day you imported it: every cost Bulk create makes, and the Cost on a sheet row with no Date Activated unless the row adds to an account you already had that has a start date. It counts in every lifetime total and in no period, month or calendar day, so it never lands in This Month. Lists show it as No date, after the dated rows, and the lifetime cash curves start from it, so they still end on the lifetime total.
When a payout counts. On the day it was paid; when that is not recorded, on the entry’s date, and as a last resort on the day it was logged. The day it was requested is never used: that is when money was asked for, not received.
Rows that cannot be placed. A row with no usable amount, or with no usable date that isn’t a cost with no date (above), is skipped rather than counted or shown; the Financials ledger’s footer says how many.
Deleted accounts. Deleting an account removes its costs and payouts from every total. A row left behind by a delete that did not finish is counted in no total; the Financials ledger lists it as left behind by a deleted account so you can remove it.

A cost or payout dated after today is listed as Scheduled on the Financials page, the firm’s page and the account’s page, and counts from its date: it is in no Reports, Financials, dashboard or firm-page total until then. The calendar shows it on its date.

Per-broker ROI

On Reports → Firms (the ROI leaderboard), on the Reports header and on each Broker detail page, ROI is:

ROI = Net / Spent × 100%

Where Net is what you walked away with from that broker (received minus spent), and Spent is the total costs paid to that broker.

With no costs recorded there is no ROI: the Reports header and the Broker detail page show —, and the Firms tab’s ROI leaderboard leaves that broker out. Add costs in Financials to see ROI.

What counts as a payout vs. a cost

Payout — money the broker paid you (a funded account withdrawal). Has a gross amount, a profit split percentage, and a net amount.
Cost — money you paid the broker (evaluation fees, resets, subscriptions, fees of any kind).

Both can be recorded against a specific account or against a broker as a whole (broker-total mode).

Personal accounts count money differently

Payouts and costs are a prop-firm idea. Your own real-money (personal) accounts don’t have evaluation fees or profit-split payouts — they track deposits, withdrawals, and broker fees instead.

Flip the Prop / Personal switch at the top of the sidebar to Personal, and the Financials page shows that cash ledger: every deposit, withdrawal, and fee, with tiles for your account value and your net gain or loss, then deposits, withdrawals, broker fees, and net deposits over the period you pick. Each row is labeled with the broker’s own description — deposits and withdrawals read as Deposit / Withdrawal, and fees keep their specific kind (Liquidation Fee, Market Data Subscription, Entitlement Subscription, and so on) instead of a generic “Fee”, so you can tell a data-feed charge from a liquidation at a glance. The same labels show in the Personal calendar’s Cash Flow list. Whether you can edit it depends on the broker: for one that reports its own cash (Tradovate) it’s read-only — the entries come straight from your broker. For one that doesn’t (CQG), you log deposits, withdrawals, and fees yourself in the personal cash ledger. Either way the same money drives your Personal dashboard, and it’s kept completely separate from your prop-firm Net cash.

Broker fees are what you paid, net: when your broker refunds a fee or gives you a credit, or you log an adjustment, it counts against the fees, so a refunded fee lowers the figure. A period where the credits outweigh the charges shows as a net credit. Deposits and withdrawals count as each broker records them, including money you move between two of your own accounts: that is a withdrawal from one and a deposit to the other, whichever accounts you have in view.

Net Gain or Net Loss

The personal Financials page leads with two tiles that take no period: Account value, the current balance of the personal accounts in view, and beside it what that balance holds beyond the money you’ve moved in and out:

Net Gain or Net Loss = account value − net deposits of all time

The tile is titled Net Gain when that’s above zero and Net Loss when it’s below, and both tiles’ captions say how many accounts they cover. A balance is as of now, so it’s set against every deposit and withdrawal you’ve made, whatever period the four tiles after it show. What’s left is everything else that moved your balance: your trading, its commissions and exchange fees, and your broker fees.

That’s the same result the Net P&L tile on your Personal dashboard reaches from your trades, so once your cash history is complete the two read the same. Where they differ, something hasn’t reached PropStax yet: a deposit, withdrawal or broker fee not logged, or, on a broker that reports your fills but not your fees, commission rates that are missing or differ from what you’re charged. With nothing logged at all, the tile reads your whole account value as a gain.

When a Tradovate account’s history begins after you opened it, the balance on that first day is shown as Carried in and counted with your net deposits, so the tile reads your result since that day. See When your Tradovate history begins after you opened the account.