Trading Journal Template: Spreadsheet vs. App
Searching for a trading journal template usually means one thing: you have decided to journal and want a structure that works. Good news — the structure is well established. Below is every column a solid template needs, whether you build it in Excel, Google Sheets or Notion, plus an honest look at where spreadsheets stop scaling.
The fields every trading journal template needs
- Trade basics: date & time opened, date & time closed, symbol, market/instrument type, direction (long/short)
- Numbers: entry price, exit price, position size, fees & commissions, gross profit, net profit
- Context: setup/strategy name, reason for entry, reason for exit
- Psychology: emotional state before and during the trade, rule violations
- Derived stats (formulas): win rate, average win, average loss, PnL by symbol, PnL by weekday
Spreadsheet template: where it works, where it breaks
A spreadsheet is free and infinitely customisable — a genuinely fine way to start. The problems show up with volume and with real life:
- You must type every trade at a desk. There is no fast way to log from your phone right after closing a position, so entries pile up and get skipped.
- Every statistic — win rate, heatmaps, per-asset distribution — is a formula or pivot table you build and maintain yourself.
- One broken formula silently corrupts your analysis; backups and versioning are on you.
The app alternative: same template, zero maintenance
AlphaTrades implements the full template above as a structured trade form: instrument type, symbol, open/close time, direction, entry, exit, quantity, fees, setup/strategy and gross/net profit — computed for you. The analytics layer that a spreadsheet makes you build by hand comes built in: win rate, weekly/monthly/yearly key stats, a profitability heatmap by weekday, best and worst trades, asset allocation and PnL distribution.
And because it lives on your iPhone, logging happens where trading happens: dictate the trade by voice, snap a screenshot for AI image analysis, or type it in — in seconds, not minutes at a desk later.
Which should you choose?
If you trade a few times a month and love tinkering with formulas, a template is fine. If you want the template plus the analysis without maintaining either, an app is the better tool. AlphaTrades is free to download, so the practical answer is to try logging your next five trades in it — if the habit sticks (it usually does when logging takes 30 seconds), you have your journal.
