Prop Challenges
A prop firm evaluation is not a normal trading account. It has phases you move through, rules that end the account if you break them, and payout conditions that decide when profit actually becomes yours. Tracking that in a spreadsheet means recalculating your drawdown floor by hand every time your balance moves.
A prop challenge in Journalit models the whole thing: the phases, the rules for each phase, and the payout policy once you are funded. Your trades feed it, so the cushion you have left is always current.
Who this is for
Anyone trading an evaluation, a funded account, or several of both at once. If your firm can fail your account for a rule you lost track of, this is the part of Journalit that watches it for you.
What a challenge tracks
Phases
Each stage of the evaluation, with its own starting balance, rules and dates.
Rules
Drawdown, daily loss limits, position size caps and profit targets, evaluated against your real trades.
Payout policy
Cycle length, profit split and the conditions that make a withdrawal available on a funded phase.
Progress
How close you are to passing, and how much cushion is left before a breach.
Creating a challenge
What this capture shows
Apply firm profile appears here because this is a Pro account. On
the free tier that slot shows a prompt instead, and the firm and challenge
names are typed in by hand.
Open the create account flow
Use the plus button in the top-right area of Accounts.
Switch the account mode
The Account mode toggle offers Regular account and
Prop challenge. Choosing Prop challenge keeps the usual
account fields and adds the challenge structure beneath them. The starting
balance moves onto the individual phases, and Monthly cost takes
the place of the regular profit-target fields.
Name the challenge
The Challenge identity section takes a firm name and a challenge
name. Both are free text, so a firm Journalit does not recognise is still fine.
Build the phases
Add each phase the evaluation actually has, then set its starting balance and rules. Phase names are yours to choose, so they can match the wording your firm uses rather than a generic label.
Phases
Most evaluations have more than one stage, and the rules usually change between them. Each phase carries its own configuration rather than inheriting one shared rule set.
Per-phase rules
A tighter drawdown in phase one and a looser one once funded is normal, and each phase stores its own.
Starting balance
Each phase records the balance it began from, which is what drawdown is measured against.
Linked broker accounts
Attach the broker account trading that phase so trades land in the right place.
Dates
Started and completed dates give each phase a real timeline.
Use Add phase to extend the structure as the evaluation grows.
Each phase carries a stage of evaluation, sim funded or live funded. Accounts settings maps each stage to an account type, so the account can retype itself as the challenge progresses. See Challenge Stages.
Moving to the next phase
Journalit watches the pass requirements and says so when they are all met, rather than leaving you to notice.
Nothing advances on its own. The banner's action names the phase you are moving
into, so an evaluation with a sim funded stage next reads Progress to Sim
Funded. Not yet leaves the challenge where it is, which
matters when your firm has not confirmed the pass at their end.
When you do advance, Journalit asks when the transition happened rather than
assuming it was the moment you clicked. You can record it as
Now or as When target reached, which backdates the
change to the trade that hit the target.
Why the timing matters
The transition point decides which trades belong to which phase. Getting it wrong moves trades into the wrong rule set and changes whether a breach appears at all.
Rules
Rules are added per phase from the add-rule menu.
Each rule collapses to a one-line summary of what it enforces, so a phase with several rules stays readable. Expand one to edit it.
Drawdown
Static
A fixed floor measured from the starting balance. The floor never moves.
EOD trailing
The floor trails your end-of-day balance upward and never moves back down.
Intraday trailing
The floor trails your peak balance as it happens, which is the stricter model.
A drawdown rule can also lock at a balance, which is how firms stop the floor trailing once you reach a threshold.
Match the firm, not the average
Intraday and end-of-day trailing produce genuinely different floors. Picking the wrong one gives you a cushion figure your firm does not agree with, which is the number you least want to be wrong.
Daily loss limits
A daily loss limit can either fail the account or only suspend trading until the next session, because firms treat the two very differently. Some firms also raise the limit permanently once lifetime profit passes a threshold, which the rule can express.
Position size and profit targets
Position size cap
The most contracts the phase lets you hold at once, across all open positions. Firms that raise the cap as profit grows are modelled as tiers rather than one fixed number.
Profit target
Set as an absolute amount or a percentage, with an option to count withdrawals toward the target.
Daily profit cap
Only part of a day's profit counts toward the target. Anything above the cap is still yours, it just does not shorten the evaluation.
Days and consistency
The rules that fail funded traders are usually not the drawdown. They are the ones about how the profit was made.
Consistency
Your best single day may not exceed a set share of total phase profit. The way out is earning more on other days, never losing to bring the ratio down.
Minimum trading days
Days with at least one closed trade. The phase cannot pass before you have this many, however fast you reach the target.
Minimum profitable days
Trading days that close at or above the firm's minimum daily profit. Break-even days and smaller wins do not count.
Live review daily profit
One trading day at or above this profit makes the account eligible for a discretionary live-account review.
Consistency is a ratio, so it moves when you win
The figure is best-day profit divided by total phase profit. A good day can push you out of compliance even though nothing went wrong, and the rule row tells you what total profit would bring the ratio back inside the limit.
Rule status
The phase lists every rule with where you stand against it, so the question "how much room do I have left" is answered without arithmetic. The example below is a phase that ran out of room.
Each row pairs the current figure with the limit it is measured against. A tick marks the rules you are clear of and a cross marks the one that ended the phase, so a failure names its own cause. Targets fill toward completion while limits fill toward danger, so a full bar means the opposite thing on a profit target than it does on a drawdown.
Rules also report a Near limit state before anything is broken and
a Failed state once it is. The point is to see pressure building
rather than to find out afterwards.
Any rule name can be opened for an explanation of what it measures, the arithmetic behind the current figure, and what would satisfy it. A rule you cannot interpret is a rule you will breach.
Payout policy
Funded phases can carry a payout policy, which is what turns profit into an actual withdrawal.
Cycle and timing
Payout cycles, elapsed-time requirements and the window in which a request can be made.
Eligibility
Balance, profit, consistency and trading-day requirements that gate a payout.
Amounts
Profit split, request amount and any maximum the firm applies.
Aftermath
What happens to the balance and drawdown floor after a payout is taken.
Journalit raises Payout ready when the conditions are met, and
Payout no longer available if you fall back below them. That second
notice exists because eligibility can be lost by trading after you qualify.
When a payout is available
Once every requirement is met, the account page leads with the amount and the two decisions open to you.
Record payout
Log the withdrawal so it counts toward payout totals and challenge economics.
Skip this cycle
Leave the profit in the account and let the cycle roll on, without the banner nagging you.
Recorded payouts are marked on the balance chart, so a dip in the curve reads as money taken out rather than money lost.
If the account carries a payout plan, the banner also states the amount that plan calls for, so the decision is not left to whatever the policy happens to allow.
Checking where you stand
A funded phase shows each payout requirement alongside the phase rules, so you can see which condition is actually holding the payout up.
Available now
The ceiling the payout policy allows, alongside a count of how many requirements are satisfied. It is not an approved figure until every requirement passes.
Preview payout
Enter an amount to test it. Journalit says whether that figure is eligible before you request it from the firm.
Consequences of the request
Trader share after the split, balance afterwards, where the drawdown floor sits, and how much room is left before a breach.
Requirement detail
Each requirement explains what it means and what would satisfy it, rather than only passing or failing.
A payout can take you closer to a breach
Requesting money reduces the balance while the drawdown floor may stay where
it is, so Room before breach is the number to read before
deciding how much to take.
Your payout plan
The firm decides when a payout is allowed. The plan decides when you want to
hear about it and how much you intend to take. Open Payout plan in
the funded phase panel to set one.
Notify when at least
Stay quiet until the available payout reaches an amount worth acting on, so small eligible amounts do not interrupt you every cycle.
Suggested withdrawal
Full amount, a percent of what is available, or a fixed amount. The banner then states the figure your plan calls for instead of only the maximum.
A plan applies to the whole account rather than a single phase, and Journalit keeps one saved plan per account.
A plan cannot create eligibility
The plan only shapes the notice. It never changes whether a payout is allowed, and a suggested withdrawal is always capped by what the policy permits, so a fixed amount larger than the available payout is reduced rather than offered.
Firm profiles
Entering a firm's full rule set by hand is the slow part of setting up a challenge. Firm profiles skip it.
Apply firm profile
Fill the phases, rules and payout policy from a maintained profile for your firm. This is a Pro feature.
My firm profiles
Save your own configuration as a reusable profile and apply it to future challenges. Available on every plan.
Pick the firm, then the specific challenge they sell, since rules differ between a firm's own products.
Firms with maintained profiles
Journalit maintains profiles for these firms, each covering the individual challenges that firm sells:
- Apex Trader Funding
- FTMO
- FundedNext Futures
- Lucid Trading
- MyFundedFutures
- Purdia Capital
- TradeDay
- Tradeify
- Take Profit Trader
- Topstep
The catalog is updated as firms change their rules and as new firms are added, so the picker in the app is always the current list. A firm that is not covered still works: enter the firm and challenge names yourself and build the phases by hand.
Applying a profile replaces your setup
Applying a firm profile overwrites the phases and rules already configured on that challenge. Journalit confirms before it does so, but it is a replacement rather than a merge.
Saved personal profiles are local to your vault. Applying one creates an independent snapshot on the account, so saving a new revision later does not alter challenges you already created.
The account page
The account page is where a challenge is read day to day. The header carries the firm and challenge name, and the balance chart overlays the rules rather than showing balance alone.
Profit target line
A marker showing what the phase has to reach.
Trailing drawdown floor
The floor drawn as it actually moved, stepping up as the trailing model advanced it.
Live rule progress
Each rule in the active phase with its current position: profit target progress, drawdown used, daily loss so far today, and trading days completed.
Next phase
The phase panel names the phase you are in and which one comes next, alongside the manual actions for advancing, failing or archiving the challenge.
Applying a firm profile later
An existing challenge links a profile from Link firm profile on
the account page rather than from the create flow.
Reading one phase at a time
The header carries a View phase control showing the current phase
and its position in the challenge, such as 2/3. It is not only a
label for the rules panel. Choosing a phase scopes the whole page to it: the
balance chart, the performance metrics and the trade log all narrow to the
trades that belong to that phase.
Why the numbers change when you switch
A phase view is not a filter you forgot to clear. Each phase is a separate attempt with its own starting balance, so totals that mixed phases together would not correspond to anything your firm measures.
Phases that open at zero
Some funded accounts do not open at the account size. MyFundedFutures Builder
and Rapid accounts, Topstep's Express Funded Account, Take Profit Trader PRO+
and Lucid's live stage all start that phase at $0 and measure
everything from there, because what you are trading is the firm's balance
rather than a notional deposit of your own.
The balance chart draws each phase in its own frame, so a phase like that starts at zero and its drawdown floor sits below zero. That is the firm's arithmetic showing through, not a bug: on a zero-origin account the floor is the loss you are allowed to take, expressed as a negative number.
Tracking progress
Accounts has a Challenges tab beside Overview, which
reframes the same accounts around the challenges they belong to.
Challenges on the Dashboard
A dedicated mode showing scorecard metrics, phase ribbons, rule progress and challenge economics.
Cost against return
Challenge costs, payouts and net, with ROI, average cost per attempt, cost per funded account and payout conversion.
Pass rates by phase and firm
Which phase actually stops you, and how long each one takes on average, grouped by phase or by firm.
Eval ROI
A Home widget covering what your evaluations have cost against what they have returned.
Challenge Alerts
A Home widget surfacing accounts that need attention, linking straight to the account page.
Challenge cards
Each challenge gets a card grouped under its account type, and the card carries the one thing that account needs next.
A ribbon for the state
Funded, phase passed, or evaluation failed, so the state is readable before any numbers are.
The action that state needs
Record payout when funded, Advance when a phase is passed, Archive when the attempt is over.
Rule progress per card
The same limits as the account page, condensed, so pressure is visible across every account at once.
Grouped totals
Each account type carries its own share of AUM, withdrawals, trades and growth.
Colour carries meaning here
A profit target at 100% is a pass. A drawdown at 100% is a failure. The bars are coloured accordingly rather than by fill alone.
Home widgets
Two widgets bring challenges onto Home, so the state of every evaluation is visible without opening Accounts.
Eval ROI
Total spend on evaluations against total payouts, and the net of the two, so the question of whether the attempts have paid for themselves has a number.
Challenge Alerts
One row per account that needs a decision, worst first: a failed phase, a target reached, a payout available or one lost. Clicking a row opens that account.
Add them from Home
Neither widget is on Home by default. Add them with the add-widget control on Home View.
Bringing existing accounts in
If you already tracked evaluations as ordinary accounts, a wizard walks through
converting them. Open it from the Set up button in the
Prop challenges section of Accounts settings, or run the
Set up prop challenges command.
Leave as is
Keep an account exactly as it is if it was never part of a challenge.
Own challenge
Promote a single account into a challenge of its own.
Group into one challenge
Combine accounts that were really phases of the same evaluation, so their history reads as one challenge.
Why grouping matters
Traders often create a new account for each phase, which leaves one evaluation split across several unrelated notes. Grouping merges them into phases of a single challenge so the timeline is continuous.
The order accounts are selected in
Grouped accounts become phases in the order you list them, oldest first, so the order is part of the data rather than a presentation choice. Two rules follow from that, and the wizard blocks the merge rather than guessing.
Only the last account can still be active
An earlier phase has to have ended before the next one began, so an account that is still running belongs at the end.
A failed account must be last
A failure ends the challenge. Nothing can come after it, so a failed account cannot sit in the middle of the order.
Reviewing before you commit
The review step reports what the merge will actually do, including the number of trades that move and the broker accounts that come with them. Warnings do not block the merge, but each one is worth reading.
Trades outside their phase window
A trade that falls outside the dates of the phase it would land in. Usually the phase dates need correcting before merging.
Identity claimed by several accounts
The same broker account is claimed by more than one of the accounts being merged, so trade attribution is ambiguous.
Copy trading periods dropped
Copy-trading relationships on the source accounts do not survive the merge and are discarded.
After the merge
A merged challenge keeps a row on its account page naming the accounts it came from, with the two actions still open to you. The row disappears once either has run.
Undo
Restores the legacy accounts and their trades. Use it if the phase order or the dates turned out wrong.
Delete legacy accounts
Removes the archived originals for good. This cannot be undone, so leave it until the merged challenge reads correctly.
Check the phases before deleting anything
Merging archives the source accounts rather than deleting them, which is what
makes Undo possible. Read the merged timeline first and only then
clear the originals.
Troubleshooting
Bottom line
A prop challenge turns the rules you are trading under into something Journalit checks for you. The value is not the record keeping. It is knowing how much room you have left before you place the next trade.