A trading journal for Tradovate and every prop firm account that runs on it.
Apex, Topstep, MyFundedFutures, Take Profit Trader, Lucid, Tradeify. If you trade evals you probably trade Tradovate, and you probably have three or four accounts open at once. Tradovate shows each one on its own. Actal puts them side by side with one set of rules, grades every trade on execution, and adds up what your mistakes cost across all of them.
Does Tradovate have a trading journal?
No. Tradovate has a Performance tab under Account Reports that shows P&L, win rate and a few averages per account. There is no place to grade a trade, tag a mistake, write a plan or check a trade against a rule, and there is no view across your accounts. For evals that is the part that matters, because the rule you break on account three is the same habit you broke on account one.
Where Tradovate traders get stuck, and what a week with Actal looks like.
Four evals open, four Performance tabs, and I fail them one at a time on the same mistake.
Every account side by side, one dashboard, one set of rules. The mistake that failed account two is tagged, costed and your focus before account three is funded.
The daily loss limit is the rule that ends evals. Tradovate enforces it and then forgets it. I never see how close I came.
Set the limit as a rule and it is checked on every import. Stopping before it counts as kept, breaching it is red on the calendar, and the pattern across accounts is one chart.
The Orders report has no commissions, so every journal I tried showed me more money than I had.
One per-contract default, set once on the preview, applied to every trade. Net P&L matches the account. No merging Cash History into the file.
Passed the eval, got funded, blew it up the same way. The green weeks in the eval taught me nothing.
Grades follow the trader, not the account. A funded account starts with the eval's execution history behind it, so the habit that nearly failed the eval is already your focus.
I plan the day and then trade whatever is moving. There is no place in Tradovate to even write the plan.
Scenarios before the open, a closeout after. Plan adherence becomes a weekly number, and the P&L splits into in-plan and off-plan. For most eval traders that split is the whole story.
Stats journals gave me a P&L calendar and a win rate. I already had those in Tradovate.
A grade on every trade, mistakes in dollars, rules checked, one thing to fix each week. The things Tradovate cannot compute, not the things it already shows.
P&L per account and the order history stay in Tradovate, and that is fine. The Orders report is the only thing Actal needs from it.
How to get the file out of Tradovate.
Written from Tradovate's own documentation and checked against real files where we have them. The same guide shows on the import page and next to any error.
Account Reports has more than one tab. Orders lists every order with its fill price, quantity and time, and only rows with Status Filled become fills. The Performance tab imports too, one row per closed trade with Tradovate's own P&L, which is handy if you only have that file. Orders is better, because it carries every fill and rebuilds scale-ins properly.
Apex on Tradovate, Topstep on Tradovate, MFF, Take Profit Trader, Lucid, Tradeify and NinjaTrader Brokerage all export the same Orders layout. Actal recognises it from the header. It does not matter whose logo is on the login page.
The Orders report has no commission column. On the preview you set a round-trip commission per contract, and Actal applies it to every trade so net P&L matches the account instead of flattering it. It's saved on the account, so every later import uses it. The Cash History tab shows the real fees if you want to check the number.
Each Tradovate account becomes an account in Actal. Set the eval's daily loss limit as a rule and it is checked on every import. Stopping at the limit counts as a rule kept. A breach shows on the calendar the day it happens, in red.
- 1In the platform click the dropdown with your account name (the gear icon) and choose Account Reports; on the web platform it is Reports in the navigation.
- 2Select the Orders tab and set the date range. If the Fills tab is there, export that instead: it carries every fill and its commission.
- 3Click Download Report and save the CSV.
- The Performance report imports as well, one row per closed trade with Tradovate's own P&L. Orders is better than Performance because it carries every fill; the Fills report is better still, because it also carries each fill's commission.
- This report carries no commissions, so the per-contract default you set on the preview screen is applied.
- Only rows with Status = Filled become fills.
- 1Open Account Reports (the dropdown with your account name, or Reports in the web navigation).
- 2Select the Performance tab and set the date range.
- 3Click Download Report and save the CSV.
- One row per closed trade with the P&L Tradovate computed, so the money is taken as stated.
- There is no side column: the leg that came first opens the trade, so a row sold before it was bought is a short.
- Scale-ins and partial exits are already paired by Tradovate. If you want every fill, and the averages worked out here, export the Fills or Orders report instead.
- No commissions in this file, so the per-contract default you set on the preview is applied.
- Timestamps carry no timezone; they are read in your profile timezone, like the Orders report.
Same report. In the top navigation open Reports, choose the account, select the Orders tab, set the dates and click Download Report. The file is identical to the desktop one.
If you log into the NinjaTrader web platform or the NinjaTrader desktop connected to NinjaTrader Brokerage, the account is on Tradovate. The web platform exports this Orders report. The desktop exports the Executions tab, which has commissions; that guide is on the NinjaTrader page.
Some evals run on Rithmic instead. Then the file comes from R | Trader, File, Order History, one day per file, with commission included. The Rithmic guide is on the supported brokers page.
Every trade checked against your rules, then graded.
Daily loss limit, max trades, size and cooldowns are checked the moment the file lands. Then each trade gets a grade on execution with your own setup criteria as the checklist, a mistake tag if there was one, and the chart marked up so the lesson sticks.
Five things that happen with Tradovate files, and the fix.
You downloaded a different report, like Cash History or Fills. Go back to Account Reports and pick Orders (or Performance, which also imports). The Orders file starts with orderId or Order ID.
Commissions. The Orders report has none. On the preview set the round-trip commission per contract to what your firm charges (both sides together, so double the per-side rate), and net P&L will match. You can change it in Settings, Accounts, and apply it to trades you imported before you set it.
The report is per account and per date range. Check you picked the right account in the dropdown before downloading, and that the range covers the days. Nothing already imported is doubled if you export again.
The exit was on the next day and the range ended at midnight, or the position was flattened by the firm. Export a day either side. If the firm closed it, the fill is still in Orders with Status Filled.
Tradovate writes the fill time in the platform's display timezone with no zone in the file. Set your profile timezone to match what the platform shows and import again.
Sim, eval, funded and live, side by side.
Each Tradovate account becomes an account in Actal with its own rules where they differ, and one dashboard across all of them. A habit that shows up on every account is easy to see.
Tradovate questions
Import today's Tradovate session. Grade it tonight.
One export, one minute, and the rules tell you how the day actually went. Free while in beta, no card, everything unlocked.