How to make a trading journal in Excel or Google Sheets

You can build this from scratch by following along. Or skip that and download the free template. It's the exact sheet this guide makes, already set up with a few example trades. Everything here is normal formulas with no macros, so it works in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers and LibreOffice.

Make a sheet called Trades and put these headers in row 1. Keep the same letters, because the formulas below use them. J to N are formulas. The rest you type in or pick from a list.

Most templates stop at column N. P to S are the ones I care about most as a coach. Was it in your plan, how well did you trade it, and what went wrong. It's ten seconds per trade and they're the only columns that tell you what to work on.

Put these in row 2 and drag them down. 500 rows is about a year for most people. They all start with IF(A2="","", so empty rows stay blank instead of filling up with zeros.

Check it with a trade. Say you went long 2 MNQ at 23,412.25, got out at 23,446.75, your stop was 23,398.00 and fees were $5.20.

Same numbers? Then your sheet is right. If Gross P&L is way off, like ten times too big, your point value is wrong. That's the most common mistake I see in futures spreadsheets by far.

If you type your mistakes in by hand, you'll end up with chased entry, chased and chase entry as three different mistakes, and the numbers stop meaning anything. Use dropdowns. Make a sheet called Lists with a column each for Side, Setups, Grades, Mistakes and Y/N.

• In Excel, select column C on Trades, go to Data, Data Validation, pick List and point it at the Side column on Lists. Do the same for Setup, In plan, Grade and both Mistake columns.
• In Google Sheets, select the column, go to Data, Data validation, Add rule, and choose Dropdown (from a range).
• Make Net P&L green above zero and red below with conditional formatting.
• Colour the grades too, A and B green, D and F red. When you scroll back through a month, the grade colours tell you a lot more than the P&L colours do.
• For the mistake list, start with the ones you already know you do. Moved stop, chased entry, oversized, revenge trade, early exit, no stop. When a new one shows up, add it to the list instead of typing it once.

Make a new sheet called Dashboard. These formulas read rows 2 to 500 on Trades. In Google Sheets you can just write L2:L to cover every row.

Most dashboards stop there. These next four are the ones I actually look at with students.

For weekly numbers, put the Monday's date in B30 and count that week's trades with =COUNTIFS(Trades!A2:A500,">="&B30,Trades!A2:A500,"<="&B30+6). Change COUNTIFS to SUMIFS and add Trades!L2:L500 as the first part to get that week's P&L. Same idea with the Grade or In plan columns.

For max drawdown you need three extra columns after Lesson. They're not in the template, so add them if you want them.

Make a line chart from column V and you've got an equity curve. If you're doing a prop firm eval, check your drawdown against the firm's limit every day. I go into why in the prop firm guide.

• All the formulas above work as they are. You can also write open ranges like L2:L so you never have to extend them.
• You can fill a whole column with one formula using ARRAYFORMULA. For Points in J2: =ARRAYFORMULA(IF(A2:A="","",IF(C2:C="Long",F2:F-E2:E,E2:E-F2:F))). Don't drag it down, it fills in by itself.
• If you type dates like 14/09/2026 in a sheet set to US format, they turn into text. Set File, Settings, Locale to match how you write dates before you start.
• To bring in a CSV from your platform, use File, Import, Upload, Insert new sheet, then copy what you need over to Trades.
• Sheets gets slow after a few thousand rows of formulas. When that happens, move last year to its own tab and paste it as values.

• Wrong point value. Log an MNQ trade with 20 instead of 2 and a normal day looks like you blew up the account.
• Grading on the result. If you weren't supposed to take the trade, it's a D, even if it made money. If every winner gets an A, your grade column is just your P&L column again.
• Changing the stop afterwards. Put in the stop you had when you got in. If you moved it, tag it as a mistake.
• Typing mistakes instead of picking them from a list. You end up with the same habit spread over five spellings and none of them look expensive.
• Putting every fill on its own row. A scale-out is one trade with an average exit, not three trades. Matching up fills by hand is where most people give up on the sheet.

Every platform exports a CSV, but it's fills or orders, not finished trades. You'd have to match entries with exits, average out partial fills, split up accounts and fix the time zone. Fine at five trades a day. Not much fun at twenty.

That's the part Actal does for you. It reads the export from NinjaTrader, Tradovate, Rithmic, TradingView and seven others, puts the trades together, and does everything in this guide plus the grades, mistake costs and plan tracking. It's free while it's in beta. I also wrote about when a spreadsheet is still the better choice.

I'm Joakim. I trade index futures and coach traders one-on-one at Jusell Trading Academy, and my students start on a sheet like this one. I checked every formula in Excel and Google Sheets with the example trade above, and they're the same formulas that are in the free template. Actal is my product.