Capital flows
UTM tracks every cash movement on your trading accounts so your performance numbers reflect trading return, not just account balance changes. A deposit and a winning trade can both raise your equity by $10,000, but only one of those is performance - UTM separates the two cleanly.
Where the data comes from
UTM gets capital-flow data in two ways, depending on the broker:
Alpaca reports every deposit, withdrawal, dividend, interest, fee, and inter-account transfer on its activity feed. UTM mirrors the feed directly, so Alpaca users almost never see a manual confirmation prompt.
TradeStation does not expose an activity feed through its API. UTM compares the cash UTM expected the account to hold against the cash TradeStation actually reports. Anything unexplained becomes a prompt for you to review. You pick the category (deposit, withdrawal, dividend, transfer, etc.), confirm the amount, and UTM records it as a capital flow. Once recorded, that row is treated identically to anything Alpaca would have reported automatically.
Interactive Brokers capital flows are not yet captured by UTM.
What you will see
The capital-flow review badge
A wallet icon sits in the top nav whenever there is something to review. The number on the badge is the count of unattributed cash movements UTM has detected across all your accounts. Click it to see the pending list; click a row to resolve it.
The in-account banner
Each account shows a pale-amber banner when it has pending discrepancies. Use this when you are already looking at the account and want to resolve everything for it in one place.
The cash flow history view
Available from the Account details. Lists every cash movement on the account: deposits, withdrawals, dividends, interest, fees, transfers, corrections. A small "Broker" or "User" tag on each row shows where the row came from.
The cash flow history excludes trading fills - those live on the Trades page. This view is specifically about money moving in and out, not about trading P&L.
The net contributions tile
A single number per account: how much money you have put in minus how much you have taken out. Dividends, interest, and fees are not contributions, so they are not included. Cash transfers between your own accounts net to zero across your whole portfolio.
How to resolve a prompt
When you click a pending discrepancy, UTM shows you the context:
- The date the change happened.
- What UTM expected the cash balance to be (based on the prior day's snapshot plus any trading activity).
- What the broker actually reported.
- The unexplained delta.
You then pick:
- Confirm a category if you know what caused the change. Pick the closest category (deposit, withdrawal, dividend, interest, fee, cash transfer in/out, correction, or other), confirm the amount, and add a note if you want. UTM writes the cash flow to your account history.
- Dismiss (not a real flow) if you have investigated and concluded the delta is not a real cash movement (a UTM bug worth following up on, or noise). Dismissing requires a note so the reason is on file. No cash flow is recorded.
Pending prompts stay pending until you act. UTM never auto-confirms or auto-dismisses on your behalf - confirmation is deliberate.
Categories
| Category | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Deposit | You added money to this account. |
| Withdrawal | You took money out of this account. |
| Dividend | The broker paid a dividend that did not show up on the activities feed. |
| Interest | The broker credited cash interest on your balance. |
| Fee | The broker debited a non-trading fee (account fee, wire fee, etc.). |
| Cash transfer in | You moved cash into this account from another broker account you own. |
| Cash transfer out | You moved cash out of this account into another broker account you own. |
| Correction | The broker corrected an earlier movement (e.g. trade bust, rebooked fill). |
| Other | Something else - use the note field to explain. |
The cash transfer categories say "between your accounts" deliberately. They are for moving cash, not securities. Moving securities (an ACAT) does not change your cash balance, so it never triggers a prompt.
The reconciliation threshold
Each account has a small noise floor: cash changes smaller than the threshold are ignored. The default is $1.00. If your broker reports frequent sub-dollar rounding deltas that swamp the queue, you can raise the threshold from Settings.
Find it under Settings > Accounts: each account lists a "Reconciliation threshold" field you can edit. The Accounts page shows the same value read-only with a "Manage in settings" link.
What this means for performance
Once UTM has a complete record of your cash flows, your performance numbers stop conflating deposits with trading profit. A future release will add:
- Time-weighted return - the right way to compare against a benchmark when you have made deposits or withdrawals.
- Money-weighted return - the answer to "what is my personal rate of return".
- Equity curve with cash-flow markers - dots on the curve showing every deposit and withdrawal so you can see how your trading performed between contributions.
These depend on the cash-flow data this surface produces, so they ship after.
TradeStation users: the first-run experience
The first time the capital-flow review surface lights up on a TradeStation account, you will likely see a backlog. UTM ran the reconciliation engine over your account's history, and every cash movement before today shows up as a prompt at once. Work through the list in whatever order suits you; pending rows never expire.
After the backlog clears, prompts arrive at the daily cadence the engine runs (once per US equity trading day, after close).
Frequently asked questions
Why does Alpaca never prompt me? Alpaca reports every activity through its API. UTM captures the activity feed directly. The reconciliation engine still runs as a cross-check; a flagged Alpaca prompt is usually a UTM bug worth filing.
Can I record a deposit before UTM detects it? Not yet. The current flow requires UTM to have detected the cash delta first via the daily reconciliation. A future release will let you record a manual cash flow without waiting.
What happens if I confirm the wrong category? The cash flow is still recorded against your account, so your net contribution and total cash flow are correct. The only thing the category affects is the line-item label on the cash flow history. Reach out if you need a row changed; that capability is not yet exposed in the UI.
Why do I see a tiny pending prompt for a few cents? The default threshold is $1.00, so cents-sized deltas usually do not show up. If they do, raise the threshold under Settings > Accounts.