Sort it before you ask

A balance that does not add up has two possible authors, and they are easy to tell apart · Taiwan

Beginners meet the money side twice: once when a figure lands smaller than the one that was sent, and once when the balance drifts with no order in sight. Those are separate authors, and every unanswerable «where did it go» starts by mixing them.

Two ledgers write to the same number. The trading ledger writes when an order is filled, when a commission line is charged, and at the daily rollover; the money ledger writes only when something is sent in or taken out. Nothing else touches the balance. So an unexplained difference is sorted by asking one question — was an order involved? — and the answer decides which ledger to open, which page to read, and whether the question belongs with the broker's support at all.

The routine

What you see, what to check, what follows

Four passes, in this order. Most differences are settled by the first two, and stopping early is the point.

Was an order open, or is the account flat?

What you see: a balance that no longer matches the last figure remembered. What to check: the position list and the closed-order history for the same clock time. Next step: an order anywhere near that moment sends the whole question to the trading ledger; a flat account sends it to the money ledger, and the two never need looking at together.
Did the difference appear at the fill, or after it?

What you see: a position that opened already showing a loss, or one that changed while nothing was happening. What to check: the two quotes on the instrument and the time on the ticket. Next step: a difference present from the first second is the spread paid at the fill, plus any commission line the ticket showed; a difference that appeared later, without a click, belongs to the daily rollover.
Is the charge stated per side or per trade?

What you see: arithmetic that is out by roughly a factor of two. What to check: the wording on the ticket where the commission is named. Next step: a charge stated per side is paid once on opening and once on closing, so a round trip carries it twice — see where the charge is placed.
Only now, open the money ledger

What you see: a difference with no order and no rollover behind it. What to check: the amount that left, the amount that landed, and the currency written beside each. Next step: two currencies mean a conversion stood between them, and whoever carried the payment may have charged for the trip. Neither figure is produced by a trading screen, so no chart can answer it.

Why the sorting works at all

The two ledgers have different handwriting

The trading ledger writes in the size of the position. Double the size and every line it writes doubles with it — the spread paid at the fill, the commission, the overnight figure. That is the signature to look for: a difference that scales with lot size was written by trading, whatever else is going on.

The money ledger does the opposite. It writes once per transfer, in whatever the transfer was worth, and it has no idea what is open on the account. Sending twice as much does not make it charge twice as much, and holding a position for a month does not make it write at all.

One line joins them, and it is worth naming so it stops being a surprise: the account counts in a single currency, chosen on the screen that creates it and not changed afterwards. That choice does not alter a single quote, a single distance travelled or a single trading hour. It decides only the unit both ledgers write in — which is why a cost worked out in pips has to be turned into money before it can be compared with anything on a statement. The arithmetic for that sits on the practice calculator.

Two lines per transfer

The note that makes the fourth pass a subtraction

The money ledger is the only one that cannot be reconstructed later from the platform, because half of it happened somewhere else. So it is written down at the time, in two lines: the amount and the currency when a request goes out, the amount and the currency when it lands. Four figures on a page, and any gap between them has an address.

Without those lines the same gap becomes a question no screenshot can settle, and it usually reaches somebody as «my balance is wrong» — which is the one phrasing nobody can act on. With them, the question either resolves into arithmetic on the spot or becomes specific enough to be worth asking. The identity check a new account goes through, a standard step completed once, sits before the first outgoing request, and a request made ahead of it simply waits.

Processing times may vary depending on the chosen payment method.

What sorting the difference does not do

It does not make the cost smaller. Knowing which ledger wrote a line explains the number; it does not change it. What a trade costs to open is priced before the click — see start here.
It has no view on the amount sent. A transfer screen accepts a figure without an opinion about it. The Standard account sets no minimum deposit, so nothing pushes back on a figure that was too large.
It cannot hurry anything. Once released, a payment is on the carrying provider's timetable, and no screen inside the platform reaches it.
It says nothing about whether to trade at all. Money needed for living — rent, savings relied on, anything borrowed — does not belong here in the first place, and sizing what is at risk is worked through in risk basics.

This site is an independent guide, not a broker: it opens no accounts and holds no money. CFDs are complex instruments and trading them is risky.

Questions asked with a statement open

The trade opened and the balance was already down. Which ledger was that?

The trading one, at the fill. A position opens at one quote and is valued at the other, so it starts the spread behind before the price has moved anywhere.

Nothing was open all night and the figure still changed. Which ledger?

Still the trading one, if a position was carried past the daily rollover — that is where the swap line applies. A genuinely flat account leaves only the money ledger as an author.

Less landed than was sent. Is that a trading cost?

No. That gap sits entirely on the money leg: a conversion between two currencies, a charge from whoever carried the payment, or both. It happens outside any trading screen.

The arithmetic is out by about double. What is usually behind that?

A commission stated per side. It is charged on opening and again on closing, so one round trip meets it twice while the mental sum met it once.

How is a cost in pips compared with a figure on a statement?

By turning it into money first: multiply the gap by the pip value of the size traded — around $10 per pip on a standard lot of 100,000 units on most US-dollar pairs, around $0.10 on a 0.01 lot.

Two instruments moved the same distance and paid differently. Which ledger explains it?

The trading one. Contract size differs between instruments, and the currency a result is counted in can differ too, so it is converted into the account's unit before it is written in.

Can any of this be rehearsed before real money is involved?

Half of it. A demo runs on virtual funds, so the trading ledger writes in full while the money ledger never writes at all — which is exactly the half worth practising. See the demo guide.

The sorting finished and the question is still open. Where does it go?

A question about one specific transfer goes to Exness support, which can see the account. A question about how a trade was priced belongs on the help page.

Where this carries on

Account types

The same charge written two ways: inside the spread, or beside it.

Compare the forms

Your first trade

The interval between the click and the fill, with a log sheet.

Follow one order

Trading words

Spread, commission and swap, defined once and used everywhere.

Open the list

One of the two ledgers can be watched for nothing.

A demo carries virtual funds with no time limit, so a fill, a commission line and an overnight figure can all be read on a statement while the money leg stays empty. The button opens the exness.com sign-up through a partner link.

Open a free demo at Exness