Import the tradebook first, write the story second
Broker truth, then human layer. Reversing the order is how journals become fiction.
Manual entry feels virtuous and quietly corrupts the record. Typing fills from memory produces a book where the prices are approximately right and the conclusions are precisely wrong.
The order that works
Import, match, verify against the contract note, then annotate. Manual entries are for genuinely missing products or for fixing a broken row — not for reconstructing a day you would rather remember differently.
Matching is where the bodies are buried
Splits, bonuses, ISIN changes, near-identical option strikes, physically settled stock derivatives. When a match looks wrong, fix it from the source file rather than nudging a price until the total looks familiar.
Guard against double imports
Re-importing the same week without a unique key doubles your P&L and flatters your year. Key on the broker trade ID where one exists, and treat any suspiciously excellent day as an import bug until proven otherwise.
- Trade count matches the broker statement
- Net P&L matches the contract note total for the period
- No duplicate trade IDs in the range
- Charges present, or the dashboard clearly labelled gross
Key takeaways
- Broker file first, annotations second.
- Key imports on broker trade IDs to block duplicates.
- Fix bad matches from source documents, not by adjusting prices.
Not advice, not a call. NiyataBook is a personal trading journal, not a SEBI-registered investment adviser or research analyst. Everything above looks backwards at trades that already closed. What happened in a book does not promise what happens next, and F&O can take a year’s savings in a week.