Something looks broken

The difference between a report that is answered in an hour and one that turns into a week of correspondence is almost always the same handful of details. This page is what to include and why each part matters.

The five-minute version

1. 1Do the scope check first — account picker, date range, Demo Mode. It takes ten seconds and it is what most reports turn out to be, so ruling it out makes the rest of your report credible.
2. 2Screenshot the whole window, not the card — including the top bar. The DEMO badge, the account count and the date range are all up there, and they are the context the figure below them means nothing without.
3. 3Copy the reference id if there is one — the line beginning “Reference” on a failure panel. It is the only thing that connects your screen to the request behind it, and it does not survive a reload.
4. 4Say what you expected and what you saw — with one concrete instance — a day, a trade, an account. Include where you are comparing from, because a broker statement’s own conventions are often the answer.
5. 5Send it from Support — with the account name if it is about one account.

What to add, by kind of problem

• A figure that looks wrong — the trade — symbol, account and date — and what your broker shows for it. If you have opened the trade’s Executions tab, say whether the fills matched.
• An account that will not sync — the account name, the broker or firm, what the Reconnect control said, and the job reference from the “Sync queued” notice if you pressed Sync.
• An import — which platform the export came from, whether it was a fills export or a round-trip export, and the file’s header row. A few sample rows help more than the whole file.
• A sign-in problem — the email address on the account, the browser, whether it reproduces in a normal window, and roughly when it started.
• A page that failed to load — the reference id and the address of the page. Both, because the same page can fail for several different reasons.

Two things that are not in the address bar

The account selection and the date range are remembered preferences rather than parts of the URL, so a link to the page you are looking at does not carry either of them. Say which accounts were ticked and what window was set, or include a screenshot that shows the navbar. Without them, the same address renders differently for whoever opens it.

One setting worth naming

The timezone saved in Settings › Preferences decides which day every trade counts on — fill times, session windows and calendar cells all follow it. If your report is about a day boundary, an overnight position or a late-evening trade, say what that setting is. It is the explanation surprisingly often.

What is worth reporting even without a repro

• A connection that drops again within a day of being reconnected — that is not the ordinary session expiry.
• Any figure you can show is wrong against your broker’s own statement, even once.
• Any wording in the product that told you something untrue about your own account.
• A control that appears to do nothing when you press it.