Account Transactions

Reference for account transactions in Tradeways — deposits, withdrawals, fees, and interest that affect account balance and equity.

What Are Account Transactions?

Account transactions are cash flows into and out of a trading account that are not directly tied to a specific trade. They represent the money you move in or out of your broker account, and they form the foundation of your account's equity curve.

Accounts settings page showing trading accounts with balance, currency, and transaction controls

Each transaction has a type, an amount, a currency, a date, and an optional comment.

Transaction Types

Type	Effect on Balance	Description
Deposit	+	Cash added to the account (e.g. initial funding, top-up).
Withdrawal	-	Cash removed from the account (e.g. profit withdrawal).
Fee	-	Account-level fees not tied to a trade (e.g. platform fee, data feed subscription, inactivity fee).
Interest	+	Interest earned on account balance (e.g. margin interest credit).

The first transaction on an account is the starting balance and must be a deposit. That starting balance may be 0 for prop or otherwise unfunded accounts. All later transaction amounts remain positive numbers. The sign is derived from the type: deposits and interest increase the balance, withdrawals and fees decrease it.

How They Affect Balance

The account balance is the running sum of all transactions:

balance = sum(deposits) + sum(interest) - sum(withdrawals) - sum(fees)

This balance is distinct from equity. Equity includes unrealized and realized P&L from trades on top of the transaction-derived balance.

Difference from Trade Adjustments

Account transactions and trade adjustments both affect your bottom line, but they operate at different levels:

Aspect	Account Transactions	Trade Adjustments
Scope	Account-level	Per-trade
Examples	Deposits, withdrawals, platform fees, interest	Swaps, dividends, funding fees, borrow fees
P&L impact	Not included in trade P&L — they affect balance/equity only	Included in the net P&L of the individual trade
Source	Manually entered or imported from broker statements	Imported alongside trades or manually added per trade

Role in Percentage Returns

Percentage P&L mode uses Time-Weighted Returns (TWR) to normalize performance across accounts of different sizes. Account transactions are essential for this calculation — they define when external cash flows occurred so the algorithm can separate trading performance from capital movements.

The first transaction is the account's starting balance and must be dated on or before the first trade execution. That starting balance may be 0. Percentage mode remains disabled until at least one transaction exists, so an explicit zero starting balance satisfies the requirement.

Cross-Currency Transactions

A transaction's currency may differ from the account's settlement currency (e.g. depositing EUR into a USD account). When computing balance, cross-currency transactions are converted using the exchange rate for the transaction date.