Prop firm challenge tracker: free CSV and Notion setup

A free day-by-day tracker for a prop firm challenge, with the fields that matter and an honest note on what it cannot do.

Download the free challenge tracker (.csv)

A plain CSV that imports into Notion, Excel or Google Sheets. It has one row per trading day of your challenge, with the columns that matter, plus three example rows (hypothetical numbers) to delete.

What each column is for

Set it up in Notion

• Import the CSV into Notion and set the property types (dates as Date, numbers as Number, Plan Followed as Select).
• Add a calendar view on Date and a table sorted by Date.
• Add a formula such as min(prop("Starting Balance") - prop("Daily Limit Floor"), prop("Starting Balance") - prop("Max Loss Floor")) to show the starting buffer; adapt it to your firm's definition.
• Highlight any row where the buffer is below a level you choose.

Where this tracker stops

• It does not know your firm's rules; you enter the floors from your own dashboard.
• It does not check whether you breached a rule. Only the firm's dashboard does.
• Daily numbers are typed in unless something fills them for you.

Letting the numbers fill themselves

AI Trading Journal keeps a daily row for each MT5 account (net P&L, trades, win rate, starting and ending balance and maximum drawdown from closed trades) and one row per closed position, into your own journal on your PC, about every 5 minutes. You keep your firm's limits in the Notes. See the journal for prop firm traders and the MT5 prop firm pages.

An honest note on privacy. Notion is itself a cloud service, so your trades do sit on Notion's servers, in your own workspace, under your own account and token. What AI Trading Journal removes is the extra middleman: there is no separate journal vendor holding your trades and no broker login sent to a website. No tool is risk-free, so protect your accounts, including Notion if you connect it, with a strong password and two-step verification.

Challenge fees are real money and prop trading is risky. This page is general education, not trading or investment advice.

Filling it in each day, step by step

• Start of day. Open your firm's dashboard and copy the daily floor and the maximum loss floor into the day's row. Note the starting balance from the MT5 Toolbox (Trade tab).
• During the day. Do not edit the row. After each loss, glance at the closest buffer and decide whether to keep the same size.
• End of day. Enter the ending balance and the day's result. Count the closed trades from the MT5 History tab (Positions view) and write that number in Trades.
• Closest buffer. Subtract the nearer floor from your lowest equity of the day if you know it, or from the ending equity if you do not. Write which one you used.
• Plan followed. Answer honestly. A Yes means every trade of the day followed your written rules.
• Notes. One or two sentences: what went well, what nearly went wrong.

What the three example rows show (hypothetical)

The example rows in the file are made up to show how the columns work together. On day one the account made $420 across three trades and the closest buffer was $4,420 to the nearer floor. On day two it lost $540 across four trades, including one that was not on the plan, and the buffer fell to $3,460. On day three it made $330 and the buffer recovered to $4,330. Seen together, the second day is the one worth studying: the largest loss came on a day with an extra, unplanned trade, and the tracker puts that fact next to the number.

Weekly questions to ask of the tracker

Useful additions in Notion

• A Table view grouped by Phase so challenge, verification and funded days do not mix.
• A Calendar view on Date, so you can see clusters of bad days.
• A percentage formula for the day's result: Day P&L divided by Starting Balance, so days are comparable as the account grows.
• A conditional highlight on rows where the buffer is under a level you decide in advance, such as the amount of two full losing trades.

Common entry errors

• Copying the firm's limit in percent instead of in money. The floor columns expect account currency.
• Mixing balance and equity between days. Pick the definition your firm uses and keep to it.
• Entering a floor from an old account after moving to the next phase. Update the floors when the phase changes.
• Skipping days with no trades. A flat day is still a data point; add the row.

To work out the floors, use the prop firm drawdown calculator; to turn the buffer into a number of trades, use the prop firm risk calculator. For the meaning of the rules themselves, see prop firm drawdown rules explained.

Some firms also check how evenly your profit is spread. The consistency rule calculator checks your best day against your total, and the consistency rule explained covers the common forms of the rule.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• A local trading journal for MT5
• P&L calendar for MT5
• Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
• Trading progress and goals
• Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
• An offline trading journal for Windows
• How to set monthly trading goals
• Import your whole MT5 history
• How to tag trades
• Trade screenshots for your journal
• All trading journal comparisons