Is Prop Trading Worth It? Reconcile Fees and Refunds

A trading result, a requested Reward and money received are different entries. To judge the cash outcome of prop participation, reconcile them with every payment you made. This guide explains that accounting task. The separate participation decision should consider suitability, programme permission and a spending cap before you pay.

Define the account and the measurement period

Record the legal entity, exact programme, contract version, account model, currency and period. FTMO describes its CFD accounts as simulated, with monetary Rewards conditional on the programme. An account label is not a deposit you own or an interest-free loan.

Keep the programme’s trading result separate from your participation ledger. The former helps determine a potential entitlement under its rules. The latter records your own paid fees, other costs, received Rewards and received refunds. Neither establishes an employment salary or future income.

Use separate columns for separate events

Do not deduct a commission twice if it is already included in a net result. Do not count one Reward both at request and at receipt. For the cash calculation below, an unpaid promise is not a receipt. Other accounting or tax treatments require their own applicable rules.

Three fictional EUR cash examples

Arithmetic only. These are not provider prices, typical earnings or an estimate of success. Assume a €120 participation payment, €30 separate tool cost and a fictional eligible trading-profit basis of €500. An assumed 80% trader share gives a €400 Reward. It does not itself prove eligibility, approval or receipt.

• No refund received: if €400 has actually arrived, participation cash result = €400 − €120 − €30 = €250.
• The €120 fee refund also arrives: cash result = €400 + €120 − €120 − €30 = €370. The fee payment and refund offset; do not subtract the same fee a second time.
• The refund is still pending: received cash remains €250 on these assumptions. Record the pending €120 separately rather than including it as money received.

Now add two earlier unsuccessful attempts at €120 each, with no refunds for them and no further costs. Total participation payments become 3 × €120 = €360. If the €400 Reward and only the final €120 fee refund are received, cumulative cash result = €400 + €120 − €360 − €30 = €130. A successful final attempt does not erase earlier payments.

These results are before any taxes or unlisted costs and assign no monetary value to your time. If no Reward or refund arrives, the outcome consists of paid costs. The examples cannot establish a break-even date, annual return or the probability of recovering fees.

Check exactly which refund rule applies

Sources checked on 15 October 2026 UTC: FTMO’s CFD fee-refund page distinguishes 1-Step, whose entry fee is not refunded, from 2-Step, whose fee may be refunded with the first Reward withdrawal. Apply the specific product and agreement; do not assume all brands, products or past attempts follow one rule.

Keep evidence of the original payment, the refund amount and receipt date. Separate a provider’s account review from a bank or payment-provider transfer. A requested or approved amount does not prove its arrival.

Do not turn the ledger into a forecast

A single positive outcome does not establish repeated monthly profit, a population pass rate or automatic scaling. Increasing an account label by 25%, for example, is not a doubling: on a purely fictional base of €100,000 it would be €125,000 before any separate programme conditions. The label still is not cash received.

Permission is a separate gate. FTMO personal-use conditions and The 5ers’ third-party and EA restrictions cannot be replaced by customer consent or software marketing. An EA does not establish eligibility, a pass or a payout.

The JPTC EA Hub is separate from the hosted JPTC Algo. The hosted service is not offered for prop evaluations; customers install or run nothing and need no VPS for it. Company broker-statement figures are not an independent audit or a study of customer evaluation outcomes. Use your own receipts and the applicable agreement to establish what actually happened.