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A good trading journal template is a spreadsheet with one row per trade and the columns you need to review it later: date, ticker or pair, side, entry, exit, size, fees, stop, target, the result in R and a note on why you took it. If a template has those columns and calculates win rate, average R and drawdown for you, it does the job for crypto and for stocks. Everything else is decoration. This guide shows which fields matter, where crypto and stocks differ, and what to check before you pay for one.
What a trading journal is for
A journal is not a profit counter. Your broker or exchange already shows your balance. The journal answers a different question: which of your trades follow your plan, and do those trades make money over time?
That is why the useful columns are about decisions, not only about money. You want to see, after 50 or 100 trades, that your breakout setups earn on average 0.8R and your revenge trades after a loss lose 1.3R. You only get that answer if each row records the setup and the reason, not just the price.
A short note before we go on: this article is about tools for recording trades. It is not investment advice, and no spreadsheet makes a strategy profitable.
The fields a trading journal template should have
Open the preview images before you buy and look for these columns. If one is missing, you can add it yourself, but then the formulas that depend on it will not exist.
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Date and time (open and close) | Shows holding time and lets you compare sessions, weekdays and months. |
| Ticker or pair | AAPL, BTC/USDT, EUR/USD. Lets you filter by instrument. |
| Side | Long or short. Many traders are good at one and lose on the other. |
| Entry and exit price | The basis of every calculation. Average price if you scaled in. |
| Size | Shares, contracts or coins. Needed for the money result. |
| Fees | Commissions, exchange fees, funding. Small per trade, large per month. |
| Stop loss | Defines your risk. Without it there is no R multiple. |
| Target | Shows planned reward and whether you exit early. |
| R multiple | Result divided by initial risk. The one number that compares trades of different sizes. |
| Setup tag | Breakout, pullback, range, news. A dropdown is better than free text. |
| Emotion or rule note | "Followed plan", "FOMO", "moved stop". The column people skip and later miss most. |
| Screenshot link | A link to the chart at entry. A row of numbers is hard to learn from without it. |
Two details separate a careful template from a quick one. First, the setup and emotion columns use dropdown lists, so "Breakout" and "breakout " do not become two categories. Second, the R column calculates itself from entry, stop and exit, so you never type it by hand.
Crypto and stocks: what changes in the journal
Most templates are built for one market and adapted to the other. The core columns are the same. The differences are in fees, time and corporate events.
- Fees in the quote currency. On a crypto exchange a fee can be charged in USDT, in the coin you bought, or in an exchange token. A template should let you enter the fee in dollars, or convert it, otherwise your net result is off by a little on every row.
- Funding rates. Perpetual futures charge or pay funding every few hours. On a position held for days this is a real cost. Look for a separate funding column, or at least a "fees and funding" column.
- Sessions. Crypto trades 24/7, so "Monday morning" means nothing until you pick a time zone. A good crypto journal stores times in one zone and can group trades by hour of day. A stock journal more often groups by session: pre-market, open, midday, close.
- Partial fills and scaling. If you enter in three parts and exit in two, a single entry and exit column is not enough. Better templates have a separate executions sheet that rolls up into the trade row with an average price.
- Splits and dividends. For stocks held for weeks, a split changes the price history and a dividend changes the result. A swing or position trader should check that the template has room for a dividend line or an adjusted price.
- Leverage. For margin and futures, size in coins or contracts is not the same as risk. The stop distance and the R column matter more than the position value.
If you trade both markets, a journal with an "asset class" or "market" column is simpler than two separate files. You filter, and the statistics recalculate.
The metrics a good template calculates
The summary sheet is where a template earns its price. These are the numbers to look for in the preview:
- Win rate. Share of trades closed in profit. On its own it says little, because a 35% win rate can be profitable and a 70% one can lose.
- Average win and average loss. In money and in R.
- Average R and expectancy. Expectancy is win rate multiplied by average win, minus loss rate multiplied by average loss. It tells you what one trade earns on average. This is the key figure.
- Profit factor. Gross profit divided by gross loss.
- Maximum drawdown. The deepest fall of the equity curve from a peak. It tells you how much pain the strategy brings, not only how much profit.
- Equity curve. A line chart of cumulative result. It should be a native chart that updates when you add a row, not a picture.
- Breakdown by setup, side, instrument and weekday. A pivot table or a filtered summary. This is where you find which setups to keep and which to drop.
Some templates also show the longest losing streak. That number helps you size positions: if you lost eight trades in a row once, plan your risk so that eight losses in a row do not end the account.
Excel or Google Sheets
Both work. The choice depends on where you log trades.
| Excel (.xlsx) | Google Sheets | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | On your computer, offline | In the browser and on the phone app |
| Logging from the phone | Possible, less comfortable | Easy, useful right after a trade |
| Large history | Handles thousands of rows well | Gets slower with heavy formulas |
| Pivot tables and charts | Strong | Good enough for most journals |
| Live prices | Needs add-ins or manual input | Built-in functions for some stock quotes; crypto usually needs manual input or a script |
| How you receive it | A file you download | Often a "make a copy" link inside a PDF or text file |
An .xlsx file opens in Google Sheets too, but check that the formulas survive the import. Dropdowns and conditional formatting usually do. Complex macros do not run in Google Sheets at all. If a template depends on macros, the description should say so, and you need desktop Excel.
What trading journal templates cost on Getly
We measured the whole spreadsheet and finance shelf on Getly on 4 November 2026: the spreadsheets and calculators, Excel templates, Google Sheets templates and business and finance categories together. That is 530 active listings, of which trading journals are only one part, so treat these numbers as the price level of finance spreadsheets in general, not of trading journals alone.
- The median price on that shelf is $12.
- The middle half of listings costs between $7.60 and $15.
- 2.5% of listings are free.
So a solid journal template does not need to cost $40. In the $8 to $15 range you can expect a trade log, a summary sheet and charts. Pay more only if the description names something extra you need, such as an executions sheet for partial fills or separate tabs for crypto and stocks.
Licences: personal or commercial
On the same shelf, measured on 4 November 2026, 48.9% of listings allow commercial use, 24.7% are for personal use only, and 21.5% state no licence.
For a journal you use for your own trading, a personal licence is enough. You need commercial use if you plan to hand the template to students of a trading course, to members of a paid group, or to clients. Copying a personal-use template into your course materials breaks its terms.
Each listing on Getly shows its licence next to the buy button, and the product page FAQ explains what that licence permits. When a listing states no licence, the page says the seller sets the terms. In that case read the description, or message the seller before you pay.
Checklist before you buy
- The trade log has stop and R columns, not only entry and exit.
- Setup and emotion columns use dropdowns you can edit.
- Fees have their own column, and for crypto there is room for funding.
- The summary shows expectancy and maximum drawdown, not only win rate.
- Charts are native and update with new rows.
- The format matches your tool: .xlsx for Excel, a copy link for Google Sheets, and no macros if you work in the browser.
- The licence fits your use, especially if you teach or share the file.
- The file list on the product page shows what you actually download. The receipt email has a download link for every file, and purchases have a 30-day refund window.
Spreadsheets on Getly to start with
Risk per trade is the column most journals depend on, and it is easier to set before you enter than to reconstruct afterwards. The Mini Risk & Position Size Calculator is an .xlsx file for $2 that sits next to a journal for that step. If you also want to keep your money outside trading in order, the Personal Finance Tracker for Excel and Google Sheets is another .xlsx file for $2.
To compare more options, browse spreadsheets and calculators, Excel templates and Google Sheets templates, and open the preview images with the checklist above in hand.
