KEEPING BETTING RECORDS: If you want to approach your betting or trading more professionally on BETDAQ, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be keeping a detailed P&L in Excel. It could really help you over the year to improve your profitability.

While many do indeed keep a P&L, lots of people don’t – so we’re going to give you five quick reasons why you should!

Knowledge Is Power

Just knowing exactly where you stand with your betting or trading at the end of each day is very important. If you’ve had a good week for example, and you’re having a bad Saturday afternoon, you might be less likely to chase your losses – because we all have bad days sometimes! Knowing exactly where you stand can put your mind at ease, and help you make better decisions.

Strengths And Weaknesses

A detailed P&L should point out to you where your strengths and weaknesses lie. This will be of huge benefit to you long-term. For example, it may point out to you that you are good at a particular sport pre-off, but not in-running – you can then focus more of your time to this sport pre-off, and ignore in-running. The improvement is two-fold, you are getting rid of the bad and focusing on the good. You can apply this to any sport or market – it will point out the sports or the markets you aren’t good at, and the ones you are – you then focus on them going forward. Being professional is all about finding an edge and taking advantage of that edge. Without a P&L, you are clueless to what that edge is.

Betting Journal

In your P&L, most likely in Excel, you can dedicate a sheet to your big bets. And before the horse runs or the match kicks off, it is a good idea to note down why you struck this particular bet. You don’t have to go into much details, just a quick note. This has huge advantages mentally, as to when these bets lose, you can go back and read why you placed this bet. Why you were right and the market was wrong. Remember just because a bet lost, doesn’t mean it was a bad bet – the value and reasoning was good. On bad runs, it’s easy to forget this – and making little notes like this can be key mentally.

Can You Go Professional?

When starting out with trading, the dream for many people is to go full time. Working your own hours and from home is always an attractive ambition for many traders and bettors. However, before you can make this jump, you have to know one thing – can you pay the bills? A detailed P&L with everything included like bills is a must. You have to know you are clearing the bills before going Pro, you can’t just jump into it. So along with keeping a details sports P&L, you should always be comparing the profit against your outgoings each month. It might also be an idea to set hours and have planned sports events in another sheet in your Excel P&L.

The Negatives Of No P&L

There aren’t many, if any, positives to not keeping a P&L. Why would you not want to know where you stand each day or week, and if you didn’t know how big your bank was – how could you stake correctly? Without adjusting your stake based on your bank, you could be highly over-stakinf and thus running the risk of running out of money should a bad run hit you. And as noted above, how would you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, you might surprise yourself on what you think you are good at and what you are actually good at based on the P&L.

So there you go, we hope if you don’t have a P&L we have changed your mind! It should only take 15 minutes per day to have a proper detailed P&L in Excel, and it can make a huge difference to you profitability!