Interactive Brokers statements: how to export them and turn them into clean data

Interactive Brokers does not hand you a bank-style monthly statement for cash. The record of every cash movement, with a running balance, comes from a Flex Query that you define once in the Client Portal and run whenever you need it. Selfirm reads the Statement of Funds section of that query, exported as XML.

What Interactive Brokers provides, and what Selfirm reads

File	Format	In Selfirm
Activity Flex Query, Statement of Funds section	XML	Read
Activity Flex Query, other sections (trades, positions, and so on)	XML	Not read
Activity Statement (default or custom)	PDF, CSV	Not read

How to export the Statement of Funds

These steps follow IBKR’s Client Portal guides for Activity Flex Queries and for running a Flex Query, checked on 11 November 2026. IBKR changes its portal often, so the wording on screen may differ a little.

Create the query once

1. In the Client Portal, go to Performance & Reports > Flex Queries. If you manage several accounts, pick the account in the account selector first.
2. Click the plus icon on the Activity Flex Query panel and give the query a name.
3. Under sections, select Statement of Funds. A window opens with the section’s fields. Select all fields, then save the section. If the section offers a choice between a base-currency summary and a breakdown by currency, choose the base-currency summary; that is the view Selfirm reads.
4. In the delivery options, set the format to XML and choose a period. IBKR offers fixed periods such as Last Month, Year to Date and Last 365 Calendar Days.
5. Click Continue, review, then Create.

Run it

1. On the Flex Queries page, click the run icon next to the saved query.
2. Save the file to your computer. If several accounts are selected, IBKR offers one combined file or a zip with one file per account.

What the file looks like

The file is XML. The root element is FlexQueryResponse; the cash movements are StatementOfFundsLine elements under FlexStatement/StmtFunds. Each line is one change to the cash balance, and its details are attributes:

Attribute	What it holds
accountId	The IBKR account (a sub-account, such as a futures sub-account, has its own)
date	Date as YYYYMMDD, e.g. 20260305
currency	Currency of the line
amount	Signed change to cash
balance	Cash balance after the change, in the base currency
activityCode	Short code for the kind of movement
assetCategory	STK for stocks, FUT for futures, and so on
activityDescription	Human-readable text

One balance in the base currency. An IBKR account keeps one cash balance in its base currency, not one per currency like a multi-currency bank account. Holdings (stocks, futures, bonds, options) sit beside that balance.

Balances can be off by a cent. Rounding means a line’s balance can differ from the previous balance plus the amount by 0.01. Selfirm allows that difference and no more.

The same activity code means different things. BUY on a stock is cash turning into a holding. BUY on a future is a daily mark-to-market gain or loss, and the commission is folded into that same cash line. You need both activityCode and assetCategory to know what happened.

The common activity codes and how Selfirm proposes to classify them:

Code	Meaning	Proposed as
DEP, WITH	Deposit, withdrawal	Transfer to or from your other accounts
FOREX	Currency conversion	Transfer
BUY, SELL, CORP, EXP on stocks and other securities	Trades, corporate actions, expiries	Transfer between cash and holdings
BUY, SELL, ADJ, EXP on futures	Futures gain or loss, commission included	Investment income (or loss)
DIV, PIL	Dividend, payment in lieu of dividend	Investment income
CINT, INTR	Interest received	Investment income
DINT, INTP	Interest paid, such as margin interest	Investment expense
OFEE	Other fees	Investment expense
FRTAX	Tax withheld	Investment expense

Large files. A year of lines for an active account can come to around 190,000 values. Opening it in a spreadsheet works, slowly; checking it by eye does not.

Example

Fictional data, three lines from a Statement of Funds:

<StatementOfFundsLine accountId="U0000000" date="20260305" currency="USD"
  activityCode="DEP" assetCategory="" activityDescription="Cash Transfer"
  amount="10000" balance="10000" />
<StatementOfFundsLine accountId="U0000000" date="20260306" currency="USD"
  activityCode="BUY" assetCategory="STK" activityDescription="Buy 10 EXAMPLE CORP"
  amount="-1500" balance="8500" />
<StatementOfFundsLine accountId="U0000000" date="20260320" currency="USD"
  activityCode="DIV" assetCategory="STK" activityDescription="EXAMPLE CORP Cash Dividend"
  amount="20" balance="8520" />

Read as movements:

Date	Description	Amount (USD)	Balance	Proposed as
2026-03-05	DEP · Cash Transfer	10,000.00	10,000.00	Transfer in
2026-03-06	BUY · STK · Buy 10 EXAMPLE CORP	-1,500.00	8,500.00	Transfer to holdings
2026-03-20	DIV · STK · EXAMPLE CORP Cash Dividend	20.00	8,520.00	Income

Bringing it into Selfirm

Selfirm is in early access. You upload the XML file as IBKR produced it, along with your bank statements if you like; a whole folder works. Selfirm recognises the Flex Query by its root element and reads the Statement of Funds lines, one account per accountId.

It checks that every balance follows from the one before (within one cent), and that consecutive exports join up. Lines repeated in overlapping exports are counted once. When the bank statement it came from is also in Selfirm, a deposit into IBKR is proposed as a transfer from that bank account, so it is not counted as income. Each movement is classified as income, expense or transfer for you to confirm, and every figure links back to the line of the XML file it came from.

Exporting to CSV or Beancount is planned, not available today. Join the waitlist to try it.

The other US institution Selfirm reads is HSBC Bank USA.