What Happens If Your Prop Firm Shuts Down? A 6-Step Checklist

If your prop firm shuts down, your evaluation and funded accounts are closed, and what you get back depends on what the firm announces and on the terms you agreed to. Some firms refund active accounts and pay pending withdrawals; you can't assume it. What you lose for certain is anything that only lived on the firm's dashboard, including your trade history, unless you kept your own copy.

This guide covers what usually happens, why it's different from a brokerage account, and six things to have ready today.

A recent example

In late September 2026 the futures prop firm FundedSeat announced it was closing. As reported by Finance Magnates on 29 September, the firm said it couldn't get access to large platforms such as NinjaTrader and Tradovate, that all active accounts would be refunded, and that pending withdrawals and positive live account balances would be paid out. Support stayed open by live chat and email.

That is one of the better outcomes: a stated reason, a refund and a support channel. Traders still lost their dashboards, statistics and notes when the platform went away. If you were half-way through an evaluation, a refund gives you your fee back, not your progress or your record of how you traded.

Why it isn't like a brokerage account closing

Most futures prop evaluations, and many funded accounts, are simulated. Topstep, for example, describes its Express Funded Account as "a simulated account". You paid the firm a fee for an evaluation service; there is usually no money of yours sitting at a futures broker in a segregated account.

That has two consequences:

• Your protection is the firm's terms of service, plus whatever it chooses to do on the way out. The rules that apply to customer funds at a registered futures broker don't automatically cover an evaluation fee.
• Live accounts are different. If a firm has moved you to a live account at a broker, that broker is a separate company. You can look up a broker or futures firm in the National Futures Association's BASIC database to see its registration status and any regulatory actions on record.

This is general information, not legal advice. If a large amount is at stake, read your agreement and talk to a professional.

What usually happens to each part of your account

The 6-step checklist to do today

None of this takes long, and all of it is useful even if your firm never closes.

1. Export your fills every week

Your trading platform keeps a record of your executions. Most platforms, including the ones futures prop firms commonly use, can export orders, fills or trade performance as a CSV file. Do it at the end of every week and keep the files in one folder, named by firm, account and date, for example firmname-50K-2026-10-02.csv.

2. Save the rules page with a date

Firms update their rules often. Save the pages that describe your account's profit target, drawdown, daily limit, consistency rule and payout policy as a PDF or screenshot, with the date you saved them. If there's ever a dispute about which rule applied, a dated copy helps.

3. Keep receipts for every fee and payout

List each payment (evaluation fees, resets, activation fees) and each payout, with dates and amounts, plus the date of any pending payout request. Keep the confirmation emails. It takes two minutes per account and it's exactly what you need if a refund process starts.

4. Keep your notes outside the firm's dashboard

Setup notes, screenshots and lessons are the part of your trading record that money can't replace. Store them in a journal you control, not in a comment box on someone else's platform.

5. Know your exposure per firm

Write down, per firm, what you've paid in and what you're owed. Many traders run accounts at more than one firm; a simple table makes it obvious how much depends on each one. This isn't a recommendation about where to trade, just a way to see your own position clearly.

6. Import into a firm-independent journal

Bring the CSVs from step 1 into a journal that doesn't belong to any prop firm. Then your statistics, your R-multiples and your notes survive any single firm. TJ imports Tradovate and NinjaTrader-style CSV exports and most other broker CSVs, detects the format and lets you fix any column before importing. Our import guide has the export steps for each platform. Our trading journal template shows which fields are worth keeping either way.

If your firm announces it is closing

1. Read the announcement at the source. Use the firm's own website or the email it sends you, not screenshots in group chats.
2. Note every deadline for payout requests, refunds and account access.
3. Download everything now: fills, statements, account metrics and invoices, before logins stop working.
4. Put any refund or payout request in writing and keep the reply.
5. Be careful with "recovery" offers. Anyone who asks you for a fee to get your money back from a closed firm deserves a lot of suspicion.

Signs worth noticing before anything happens

A firm can close for business reasons that are hard to see from outside, as the platform-access example shows. Still, a few things are worth noticing:

• frequent, sudden changes to payout rules,
• payouts that start taking much longer than the stated timeline,
• a change of trading platform with little notice,
• rules pages that are hard to find or contradict each other.

None of these proves anything on its own. They are reasons to export your data and keep your records current, which you should be doing anyway.

Your trading record is the asset that travels

A refund replaces a fee. It doesn't replace six months of evidence about which setups work for you, which sessions you trade best and what breaking your rules costs. That evidence is what lets you start again at another firm without starting from zero.

If you're preparing for a new evaluation, our guides on passing a futures prop firm challenge and the consistency rule are a good place to start, and the prop firm rules cheat sheet links straight to each firm's own rule pages.

TJ keeps your journal independent of any firm: import your CSVs, set your firm's limits in the app, and your history stays with you. Start free.

Facts about FundedSeat are as reported by Finance Magnates on 29 September 2026. This article is general information, not legal or financial advice.