Tracking the Wheel: spreadsheet or app?
Most wheel traders start with a spreadsheet. Here is what a good one needs, where it falls over after a few dozen trades, and what an app does differently.
The columns a wheel spreadsheet needs
| Column | Why |
|---|---|
| Date opened, date closed | Days in trade, premium per day, monthly totals |
| Underlying, type (put/call), strike, expiry, contracts | Identifies the contract; strike × 100 × contracts is the collateral |
| Premium received, buy-back paid | Realized P/L per contract |
| How it ended: expired, assigned, bought back | Assignment changes your share count and cost basis |
| Shares held and running cost basis per stock | The only number that tells you whether a campaign is ahead |
| Dividends received | Part of the campaign's return |
| Account | Roth, taxable and HSA have different tax treatment |
Where spreadsheets break
- Cost basis across premiums. After an assignment, every earlier put premium belongs to the shares. After three covered-call cycles, so does that premium. Keeping the per-stock running total right by hand is where most sheets go wrong.
- Assignments and rolls. A roll is a close and an open on the same day; an assignment is an option close at $0 plus a stock trade at the strike. Entered as separate rows they double-count or go missing.
- Stale positions. The sheet shows what you typed, not what you hold. Contracts you closed at the broker linger; shares you bought never appear.
- Time. Twenty minutes a week of data entry is 17 hours a year, and the sheet is still only as current as the last Sunday.
What a tracker app does instead
An app such as WheelCopilot reads the broker's own export. The activity file supplies every open, close, assignment and dividend with the broker's dates and prices; the positions file supplies what you hold right now, and replaces the stored positions when you upload a new one. Cost basis, campaign totals, Expired-vs-Assigned labels and monthly premium come out of that automatically, and live quotes give each open contract a buy-back value and loss risk. The trade-off is trust: an app parses files you didn't write, so you should check its numbers against your broker, as you would a new spreadsheet formula.
If you keep the spreadsheet
Add a per-stock summary tab that sums premium and dividends against shares held, record how each contract ended, and reconcile share counts with your broker monthly. Those three habits fix most of the damage.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free wheel strategy spreadsheet template?
Many are shared on Reddit and sold on Etsy. Any template that has the columns above will work; the hard part is keeping the running cost basis per stock right over time, not the template.
Can WheelCopilot import my existing spreadsheet?
It reads brokerage CSV exports (Fidelity tested; others in beta) and generic CSV files with symbol, date, action, quantity, price and amount columns. A spreadsheet exported as CSV with those columns can usually be read; check the result.
Disclaimer. WheelCopilot is portfolio-tracking software with calculations and AI-generated commentary, for informational and entertainment purposes only. Much of its research is done by AI, which makes mistakes. Nothing on this site is investment, tax or legal advice, a recommendation to buy or sell any security, or the only source of information you should use. We are a software company, not a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer. Options trading involves substantial risk. Verify anything you act on against your broker and, where appropriate, a licensed professional. Terms of Service · Privacy Policy