To get started using TradeMax with minimal amount of time, please follow steps below or see the online tutorial :

Notes : If your PC system is Win 7 or Windows Vista , you will be required to run TradeMax as an administrator during the process of handling your transaction charts or reports . How to run TradeMax as an asministrator in Window 7 or Vista?

Setup an account to import your trades

You can setup a separate account for each brokerage and trader by right-clicking the item on the Account List and selecting the “Add New Account“.

TradeMax will pop-up a dialog box to complete your account information. For usage within TradeMax the minimum information required to be entered is the Broker Name, Account Name, Type and Currency.

Then TradeMax will automatically create you a new account in the Account List like the following: (For example, Interactive Brokers Jone is the new account name)

The FY2008 contains the whole trade data and the baseline positions of the tax year 2008 and the trades executed in January of the following tax year

The Finance Data contains the cash flow data, for example, cash dividends.

The Trade Data contains the important data for the Schedule D purpose

Learn more about: Setup a New Account.

Enter Baseline Positions

PLEASE DO NOT SKIP THIS IMPORTANT STEP!

If you held positions open from the previous tax year and you are using TradeMax for the first time, you must manually enter each open position into TradeMax prior
to importing your trades for the current tax year. Doing this after importing your current year trade data will cause trades to be mismatched. (i.e. TradeMax cannot possibly match a sale in 2008 to a purchase in 2007 or earlier if the purchase has not been entered first before importing.)

You can locate a list of your open positions at year-end by viewing your December monthly statement for the previous tax year. For example, if you are working on tax year 2008, you will need to locate your December 2007 monthly statement.

Learn more about: Append a Trade.

Note:

  • Since your held positions do not belong to the current tax year, you need to select the Trade Include In Year checkbox and enter the specific tax year.
  • Please do not enter or import any closed positions from any year prior to the current tax year.
  • This only needs to be done once for each brokerage account. Every year thereafter, you can use the function End Of Tax Year to copy your year-end open positions to your next tax year data file.
  • If you have no open positions, you can skip this step.

Import Your Trades

With the function Import Trade, you can import trade history from a downloaded CSV file, Text file, QIF file to the existing account (for example, AB Watley John) or directly import trade history from online broker accounts.

Learn more about: Download a Data File.

The import function are available under the Account List: Right-click on the Account which you want to import your data file and select the Import Trade.

Learn more about: Import Trade.

Learn more about: Import Trade from Online Broker

Trades are matched by symbol and matched for buys, sells, partial fills and short positions, even if your broker doesn’t flag short sales on your reports. Our software uses “open a trade, close a trade” terminology rather than “buy” and “sell”, which eliminates confusion as to whether your positions are long or short. After you import the trade data into TradeMax, a Report Wizard dialog box will pop up to simplify the process of generating reports, but you should use End of Tax Year function to generate baseline position or enter your baseline position by hand before generating the report, otherwise the results will be inaccurate.

Note:

  • Please import the current tax year trade data and January of next tax year for the tax purpose.We suggest you import the data until the end of the March in case of the negligence.
    The January of next tax year trades are required for properly calculating wash sales.
  • Please do not import any closed positions from any year prior to the current tax year as this also will distort the profit/loss calculations for the current tax year.

Confirm Your Data

After each importing, you need to make sure everything is matched properly.There are two confirmation methods which can help you to complete the task:
Compare your holding positions in TradeMax with your broker’s December statementThe holding positions should be the same.Learn more about: How to display all holding position.


If there is any unmatched position, you can check these:

  • Make sure to take unsettled trades on the December brokerage statement into account.
  • Make sure to adjust for securities referring stock splits, mergers, spinoffs or symbol name changes.Stock Splits | Mergers | Spinoffs | Changing Symbols

Compare the 1099 Reconciliation report with your brokerage 1099.

The Difference in the lower right should be minimal.
Learn more about: How to run the 1099 Reconciliation Report.
If your 1099 reconciliation report doesn’t match your brokerage 1099, you may need to check the following:

  • Is open Short Sales from Previous Tax Year is included in your brokerage 1099?
  • Is options Trading is included in your brokerage 1099?
  • Is there any unsettled trade on the December brokerage statement?

Adjust Your Trades for Tax Purpose

After all data is confirmed, the next step is to take some adjustment for the tax purpose. If there is no such trade, this step can be skipped.

  • Combine trades with same buying slots (TradeDate, Action and Symbol are same)It will help you to avoid the wash sale generated in one lot.
  • Match specific transactions for a tax purposeTradeMax uses strict “First In, First Out” (FIFO) trade matching as a default. It also provides the function, which enables the user to discard FIFO trade matching and “force-match” specific trade transactions together into a tax lot. It will help you to avoid changing your long-term investment to short-term one.
    Learn more about: How to match specific trade transaction.

End Of Tax Year

After all trades executed during the tax year have been imported and matched correctly, you are ready to end the tax year on your account for the next tax year. It is a step to show the year end open position and wash sales defer loss and it also can generate next year baseline position and defer cost to these positions. After End of Tax Year, you will not need to repeat STEP2 and STEP 4 on subsequent year

Learn more about: End of Tax Year topic.

Note:
To enable TradeMax to calculate wash sales and defer losses to the following tax year where applicable, you need to enter the trades executed in January of the following tax year
first.

If you have several different brokerage accounts, you must combine these into one account so that TradeMax can calculate wash sales across accounts.

Use right-clicking the account and select the Add View > Custom to complete the Combine Account process. Then run the combined account just as the single accounts.
Learn more about: Combine Your Accounts.

Run Reports

To generate a report, right-click the specific account and select the specific report type.

The following report types are available:

  1. 1099 Reconciliation report - This report allows you to reconcile the Total Sales amount in TradeMax to your brokerage provided 1099-B Gross Sales amount and shows any necessary adjustments to the TradeMax Total Sales such as for open short sales and option sales.

    2.  

  2. Cost Basis Transaction Report -This report is for those users who track the cost basis in stocks, bonds and mutual funds to report a cost basis when an investment is sold.

    3.  

  3. Daily Market Value Report - This report is for those users who track the performance and market value of the securities on daily basis in specific finance year. The report will show the portfolio of every transaction on daily basis.

    4.  

  4. IRS Schedule D-1 - This report is for those users who require a more exact replica of the IRS form.

    5.  

  5. Mark to Market Detail Report - This report is for those users  want to record the price or value of a security, portfolio on a daily basis to calculate gains and losses or to confirm that margin requirement are met.

    6.  

  6. Mark to Market For Form 4797 - -This report is for traders in stocks, options and single-stock futures who elect mark-to-market accounting to report their trading activity on Form 4797

    7.  

  7. Realized Gain/Loss Report - This report is for those users who require trade transaction detail. Such as Security, Quality, open price, Open date, Open Commission, close price, close commission, sales price, cost basic, Actual gain &lose for each transaction. Moreover, it can be grouped by ID, Symbol, or TradeDate.

    8.  

  8. G& L Report - This is the default report created by TradeMax for filing with Taxes.

    9.  

  9. SummaryReport - Display or print a trade summary report. This valuable summary or aggregation of an entire ID or Symbol allows a user to see how one Symbol performed versus another

    10.  

  10. Transaction Detail Report - A report display all trade detail. This report lists each and every transaction as displayed in the grid. Additionally, the profit or loss can be summed by Trade Number, Ticker, or Date.

    11.  

  11. Unrealized Gain/Loss Report - This report is for those users who  want to get the information of Gain/Loss when the price of the securities decrease or increase after buying, but he or she has yet to sell it.

    12.  

  12. Wash Sale Detail Report- This report allows you to analyze your disallowed wash sale losses that have been deferred to next year

    13.  

File Your Taxes

You can either print the appropriate TradeMax G&L report attaching it to your tax return and file by mail, or you may export your TradeMax gains and losses to popular tax software programs with the TXF Export function.

  • Print and mail your IRS tax formsIn the Description of Property column on your IRS Schedule D (for cash basis accounting), write “See attached report”. Then simply copy the totals from your TradeMax IRS Schedule D-1 Gains and Losses report to the appropriate section on the schedule.Learn more about:m How to Print your Report.
  • Export your Gains & Losses to popular tax software with TXF Export function.
    TradeMax provides you an easy way to export your G&L with TXF Files.

Learn more about: How to Export Tax Year Gains & Losses to TXF format .

TXF File Export is a report type which allows importing your TradeMax gains and losses into popular tax software.