Contract Note Explained: Reading Every Line of Your Broker’s Trade Confirmation

Most of us open the broker’s email after a trade, see the PDF attachment and never click it. That’s a mistake. The contract note is the only document that tells you, line by line, what the exchange actually did with your order and what every rupee of cost was. With the contract note explained properly, it stops being an inbox nuisance and becomes the cleanest record you have of your own trading.

This guide walks through what a contract note is, the columns you’ll see on one, the charges block at the bottom, what it deliberately leaves out, and two worked examples that show how a ₹1,000 intraday gain shrinks once the levies are added. The stock and trade prices in the examples are made up; the rates come from NSE’s page on SEBI turnover fees, STT and other levies and one broker’s published charges.

What a contract note is, and why it matters

A contract note is your broker’s formal confirmation of the trades executed for you on a given day. PhonePe’s Share.Market help page calls it a legal record of all trades executed on a trading day, with a breakdown of the charges, and says it is emailed to your registered address whenever you have traded. No trades that day, no contract note.

The timing is fixed. The investor charter for stock brokers (this copy is Zerodha’s) lists “issuance of contract notes” with an expected timeline of 24 hours of execution of trades. The same charter tells investors they should receive contract notes showing transaction price, brokerage, GST and STT/CTT separately within those 24 hours.

Why care? Because it is the document you fall back on in a dispute. If a fill price looks wrong, if a trade shows up that you don’t remember placing, or if charges look heavier than your broker advertises, the contract note is where you check first. The charter also asks investors to verify trade details on the exchanges’ own trade verification facility and to approach the broker, the exchange or SEBI if something doesn’t match.

The contract note is the one place where the exchange’s version of your trade and your broker’s bill sit on the same page. Read it the day it arrives, not the day you file taxes.

The header: who, when and where

The top section is plain identification, but it’s worth a ten-second look. Share.Market’s guide says this part carries the date for which the note was created, your trading code and your name. A typical note also shows the broker’s name and SEBI registration details, the exchange and the segment (cash, F&O, currency and so on).

Two quick checks here. First, the date: make sure the note is for the day you think it is, especially if you placed an order late in the session. Second, the segment: if you meant to buy for delivery but the note sits under a different product or segment, the charges below will look different, and that’s often the first clue that an order went in with the wrong product type.

Reading the trade table column by column

The middle of the note is the trade table. ICICI Direct’s guide to reading the contract note lays the columns out clearly, and most brokers use a close variant:

• Order No: the exchange order number.
• Order time: when the order was placed.
• Trade No: the trade number on the exchange.
• Trade time: when the order was actually executed at the exchange.
• Contract description: the stock or instrument.
• Buy (B) / Sell (S): the side of the trade.
• Bought qty and Sold qty: the quantities.
• Gross rate / trade price per unit: the price at which the trade executed.
• Brokerage per unit: brokerage charged per share or unit.
• Net rate per unit: per ICICI Direct, the same as the gross rate, because brokerage is shown separately.
• Net total (before levies): the amount due to or from you before brokerage and taxes.
• Closing rate per unit: used for derivative contracts carried over, showing the price at which the contract is closed for the day.

The gap between order time and trade time is the first thing we look at. A limit order placed at 9:20 and filled at 2:45 tells you the market only came to your price late in the day. A market order with a big gap between the two is unusual and worth a question to the broker.

Why one order can show several lines

This trips up a lot of new traders. Share.Market’s guide explains that if a single order is filled through multiple trades at different prices, the contract note will show multiple entries for it. So a buy order for 500 shares might appear as three lines: say 200, 180 and 120 shares, each with its own trade number, trade time and price. Nothing is wrong. The exchange simply matched your order against several sellers.

The same guide adds that brokerage is calculated per order, not per trade, and is grouped and shown at the end. That matters if your broker charges a flat fee per executed order: three fills of one order should not mean three brokerage charges.

The charges block: every levy on your trade

Below the trade table sits the part that actually decides your net profit. ICICI Direct lists the items as brokerage, GST, STT, stamp duty, SEBI turnover fee and exchange transaction charges, with the net amount to be debited from your bank shown at the end. Here’s what each one is, with the rates NSE publishes on its levies page.

Securities Transaction Tax (STT)

NSE’s table, updated in April 2026, shows STT at 0.1% for both the buyer and the seller on equity shares settled by delivery. For equity sold without delivery, which is intraday, it’s 0.025% charged to the seller only. On the derivatives side, the rates effective from April 1, 2026 are 0.05% on the sale of futures (it was 0.02% up to March 31, 2026) and 0.15% on the premium when an option is sold (up from 0.10%). NSE also notes that STT is calculated on the value of the transaction based on the volume weighted average price.

Stamp duty

Stamp duty is paid by the buyer. NSE’s page puts it at 0.015% on delivery-based transfers of shares, 0.003% on non-delivery (intraday) trades, 0.002% on equity futures and 0.003% on equity options. NSE adds that since July 1, 2020, after the Finance Act, 2019 amended the Indian Stamp Act, 1899, this stamp duty has been levied and collected by the clearing corporations authorised by the stock exchanges.

SEBI turnover fee

Small but always there. NSE lists it at 0.0001% of the transaction price for securities other than debt, which works out to ₹10 per crore of turnover.

Exchange transaction charges

This is what the exchange charges for using its platform, and brokers pass it on. NSE’s levies page doesn’t list a single rate, so check your broker’s tariff. Zerodha’s charges page, for example, shows NSE transaction charges of 0.00307% for equity delivery and intraday, and 0.03553% on premium for options.

GST

NSE lists GST at 18% on stock brokers’ services, paid by brokers and collected from clients. Zerodha’s page spells out the base it uses: 18% on brokerage plus SEBI charges plus transaction charges. Notice what’s missing from that base. STT and stamp duty are not taxed again. ICICI Direct’s guide adds that the 18% may appear as CGST and SGST of 9% each or as IGST of 18%, depending on the billing address.

Brokerage

This varies the most from broker to broker. As one example, Zerodha’s charges page lists zero brokerage on equity delivery and, for intraday equity, 0.03% or ₹20 per executed order, whichever is lower.

Worked example 1: a delivery buy

Say we buy 50 shares of a hypothetical company at ₹1,200 each for delivery on NSE. The trade value is ₹60,000. Using NSE’s levy rates and Zerodha’s published brokerage and transaction charges:

STT is the big one here, at ₹60 of the ₹71.24. Even with zero brokerage, buying for delivery isn’t free, and you’ll pay STT again at 0.1% when you sell. Real contract notes round each line, so your figures may differ by a few paise.

Worked example 2: an intraday round trip

Now an intraday trade. We buy 200 shares of a hypothetical stock at ₹500 and sell them the same day at ₹505. The buy value is ₹1,00,000, the sell value is ₹1,01,000, and the gross profit is ₹1,000. Total turnover across both legs is ₹2,01,000.

So the ₹1,000 gross gain becomes roughly ₹917 after charges, before any income tax. About 8.3% of the profit went on costs. On a smaller move, say ₹1 a share instead of ₹5, the gross gain would be ₹200 while the charges would barely change, because most of them scale with turnover, not profit. That’s the arithmetic that quietly kills a lot of scalping strategies, and the contract note is where you see it in black and white.

Charges scale with turnover, not with profit. A strategy that trades often for small moves can look great in a backtest and bleed on the contract note.

If you keep a trade log, copy the net figure from the note rather than your own estimate. Our guide to a trading journal template for India shows the fields worth tracking after every trade.

What the contract note leaves out

Not every charge you pay shows up here, and this causes confusion when the ledger doesn’t match the note. Share.Market’s guide says the contract note does not include annual maintenance charges, payment gateway charges, depository participant (DP) charges, call-and-trade charges, delayed payment charges and similar items, because they aren’t part of the trade itself. Those appear in your cash ledger. ICICI Direct says the same about call-and-trade and DP charges, which it shows in the funds statement instead.

DP charges are the ones people most often miss when they reconcile a sale. Because they sit in the ledger and not on the contract note, the money that finally reaches you can be a little lower than the note’s net amount. Check the ledger before you call the broker.

A quick checklist when the note lands

• Is the date right, and does every trade on it match an order you placed?
• Do quantities and prices match your order book? If an order filled in pieces, do the pieces add up?
• Is the segment and product right (delivery versus intraday)? The STT and stamp duty lines will tell you quickly.
• Is brokerage charged per order, as your plan says, rather than per fill?
• Does the net payable or receivable match what moved in your ledger, after DP and other non-trade charges?
• If anything looks off, cross-check the trade on the exchange’s trade verification facility and raise it with the broker in writing.

Costs are only one part of trading safely. For the bigger picture on sizing and stops, see our pillar guide on risk management in trading. And if you’re selling shares you got in an IPO, our piece on listing gains tax in India covers what happens after the contract note, at tax time.

The short version

A contract note is a one-page audit of your trading day. The top tells you who and when, the table tells you exactly how your order was filled, and the charges block tells you what the trade really cost. Read it within a day, keep the PDFs for the year, and use the net figures, not your guesses, when you judge whether a strategy is working. It takes two minutes. Most traders who skip it only find out what they were paying when the year-end statement arrives.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and education only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. The companies, share prices and trades in the worked examples are hypothetical and used only to show the calculations; levy rates are as published by NSE and brokerage and transaction charges are one broker’s published rates at the time of writing, and your broker’s charges may differ. Investing involves risk, including the loss of capital. Please consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making investment decisions.