Bookkeeping for a Prop Farm: The Per-Account Ledger
3 min read · also published as a field note
The screen balance on a funded account is a number the firm lets you look at. It is not money until a payout lands, and it tells you nothing about whether your farm is growing. The ledger does. Here is the one we keep for our own desk, in shape rather than in figures.
One row per seat, one row per event
Per account: firm, account size, date bought, seed cost, state (evaluation / funded / breached / recycled / closed), date of each state change, days in state, payouts requested and landed with dates and amounts, and what each landed payout became under the split — seed, buffer, income.
Per event: every reset, activation fee, breach with its cause (rule, not "bad trade"), payout freeze, and rule change at the firm.
That is it. It fits in a spreadsheet. It is also the difference between running a farm and paying for a subscription.
The three numbers it gives you
- Attempts per pass — seeds spent ÷ funded accounts produced. The exchange rate between fees and seats, and the only honest input to how many evaluations to run. - Time to first payout — days from funded to the first landed payout. Set by the firm's rules and your pacing. - Funded survival — how long a funded seat lasts before a breach. If this is shorter than time to first payout, the loop leaks.
Those three decide whether the seed-cashflow-recycle loop turns. No other number in trading tells you.
Why cause, not outcome
When an account breaches, the ledger records *which rule* ended it: daily loss, trailing drawdown, consistency, news, inactivity, hedging. Over time that column is the most useful thing in the document. If a farm's breaches are all one rule, the process has one specific problem — usually a fixable one. If they are spread, the process is not ready for the seat count.
Why the screen balance is excluded
Unrealised profit on a funded seat is the firm's until it pays. Recording it as an asset is how operators convince themselves the farm is bigger than it is, right before a trailing floor takes it. The ledger records landed money and real fees. Nothing else.
The tool we built
We built an internal version of this for our own desk — a page that keeps the seed ledger, the two trees, the rulebook per firm and the calendar in one place. We do not sell it and it does not appear on this site, but its shape is the shape above. You can build the same thing in a spreadsheet in an afternoon, and you should, before the second seat exists.
Kingdom Portfolios is an independent education company. We're not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any prop firm, broker, or platform named here, and we don't use affiliate links. Nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation to join any firm or trade any product. Funded-account evaluations cost real money and most participants never pass or get paid — learn first, and trade your own risk. Rules and fees change often; verify current details on each company's own site. Education only.
Common Questions
What is the most important thing to track across prop firm accounts?
Real money in and out per account — seed cost, resets, landed payouts — and the rule that ended each breached account. From those you get attempts per pass, time to first payout and funded survival, which decide whether the farm grows.
Should I track unrealised profit on funded accounts?
Watch it for risk (distance to the trailing floor), but do not book it as an asset. Until a payout lands it is the firm's, and booking it is how a farm overstates its own size.