Prop Firm Journal Template: A Free Rules Tracker With a Daily Log
One row per rule with room left and share used, plus a daily log that shows the drop from a high. You type the rules from your firm's own page.
3 Nov 2026 · 6 min read
On this page
This is a rules tracker for an evaluation or funded account: one row for each rule, and a daily log that shows how much room each rule has left. It contains no firm's numbers. You type every rule from the firm's own page on the day you read it, because limits, targets and the way a day is measured differ between firms and change.
Download it
- Rules tracker, Excel (.xlsx): the Rules, Daily log and Summary sheets, with the formulas.
- Rules tracker, .csv: the typed columns of the Rules sheet, for any other tool.
No sign-up. It needs Excel 2019 or later, Google Sheets or LibreOffice. For the trades themselves, pair it with the trading journal template.
The Rules sheet
Each rule is one row. You give it a name, say whether it is a limit to stay under (a daily loss limit, an overall loss limit) or a target to reach (a profit target, a minimum number of trading days), type the number and its unit, say what it is measured on, and type where you are now. Three columns work themselves out:
- Room left, or still to reach: the limit minus the current value.
- Share of limit used: the current value divided by the limit.
- Status: for a limit, Inside, Close to or At or over; for a target, Not yet or Reached. "Close" starts at a warning line you set yourself (the sheet starts it at 80%; change it).
There is a cell for the date you last read the rules page and a column for where each rule is written, so a rule you typed in October can be checked against the rules as they stand in December.
A worked example, with made-up rules
Nothing below is any firm's rule. The numbers are invented to show the three columns, and the warning line is 80%.
| Rule | Type | Limit or target | Current | Room left | Share used | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daily loss limit | Stay under | 500 | 180 | 320 | 36% | Inside the limit |
| Overall loss limit | Stay under | 1,000 | 850 | 150 | 85% | Close to the limit |
| Profit target | Reach | 800 | 800 | 0 | 100% | Reached |
| Minimum trading days | Reach | 5 | 3 | 2 | 60% | Not yet |
The Daily log
One row a day: the balance at the start, the balance at the end, and, if your rules look at equity, the lowest equity that day. The sheet works out the day's result, the cumulative result, the highest end-of-day balance so far and the drop from that high. Here is the same arithmetic on five made-up days.
| Day | Start | End | Day result | Highest end so far | Drop from that high |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 10,000 | 10,120 | +120 | 10,120 | 0 |
| Day 2 | 10,120 | 10,080 | −40 | 10,120 | 40 |
| Day 3 | 10,080 | 10,230 | +150 | 10,230 | 0 |
| Day 4 | 10,230 | 10,180 | −50 | 10,230 | 50 |
| Day 5 | 10,180 | 10,220 | +40 | 10,230 | 10 |
- Largest drop from a high: 50. It reads end-of-day balances only, so it cannot see a swing inside a day.
- Best day as a share of the total: the best day is +150 and the total is +220, so the best day is 68% of the total. The Summary sheet shows this share, and leaves it blank when the total is not above zero. What share matters, if any does, is for your own rules to say.
Where the sheet stops
Firms define a day, a balance and a drawdown differently: some measure on balance and some on equity, some from a fixed starting figure and some from a trailing high, and the reset time differs. The sheet follows what you type and knows none of that, so read the firm's definition before you trust a status. The guide to daily loss and trailing drawdown sets out the generic shapes, and the consistency rule covers the best-day arithmetic. The sheet is a record you keep, and it does not enforce or check anything. The prop-firm rules directory links to each firm's own site and covers copying, account totals and platforms rather than loss limits today, so take the numbers from the firm's own page.
Keeping the trades beside the rules
A rules tracker says how much room is left. It does not say why a day went the way it did. Keep the trade-level record in a journal beside it, and read the two together at the end of each day. The guide on journalling an evaluation covers what to log.
We're working on a free journal and a backtester, with no date yet. Today Trepeat is a trade copier for MT4, MT5 and cTrader, currently on demo accounts, and you can add notes, a grade and screenshots to any copied trade once it closes, with a calendar of your results.
That journal has no rules tracker, so this file is one, kept by you; see the journal documentation for what it records.
Written by the Trepeat team.