How to Read a Crypto Execution Report: Fees and Fills

The receipt is not the order ticket

An order ticket describes an intention: buy 1 BTC, limit 60,000, good until cancelled. An execution report describes what happened: which quantities traded, at which prices, against which counterparties, and what commission was charged.

The two are easy to conflate because the confirmation screen often shows the limit price in large type. But once an order has traded, the limit price is history. The numbers that matter for cost and accounting are the executed quantity, the cumulative quote amount, and the fee.

The five fields that explain a trade

Using Binance’s spot API as the reference, an order response contains, at minimum:

The average fill price is not a separate field. It is cummulativeQuoteQty / executedQty, in quote currency per unit of base. If the order bought 0.5 BTC for 29,998 USDT, the average is 59,996 USDT per BTC.

Binance’s documentation shows a FULL response with five fills of 1, 5, 2, 1 and 1 units, summing to an executedQty of 10. That is the important structural point: one order, many fills, one aggregate row.

A worked example, including the fee

Suppose a limit buy for 0.5 BTC at 60,000 USDT fills in two parts:

• 0.2 BTC at 59,990 USDT
• 0.3 BTC at 60,000 USDT

The quote spent is (0.2 × 59,990) + (0.3 × 60,000) = 11,998 + 18,000 = 29,998 USDT. The average fill price is 29,998 / 0.5 = 59,996 USDT.

Now the commission. If the venue charges 0.1% in BTC, the fee is 0.0005 BTC, and the net quantity received is 0.4995 BTC. The effective cost per BTC received is 29,998 / 0.4995 = 60,056.06 USDT. The 0.1% fee shows up as roughly a 0.1% higher cost per unit, not as a separate line on the price.

If the same fee is charged in USDT instead, the quantity received stays 0.5 BTC and the cost is 29,998 + 29.998 = 30,027.998 USDT, or 60,055.996 per BTC. The two conventions produce almost the same effective cost, but they change which balance moves. That difference matters when reconciling a wallet, not when judging the trade.

Partial fills and the remainder

A PARTIALLY_FILLED status means the order has traded some quantity and the rest is still working. On a limit order this is normal: the order rests on the book and fills as counterparties cross it. The report shows the executed part and leaves the remainder open.

Two details are easy to miss:

1. The remainder can be cancelled. Cancelling stops the unfilled quantity; it does not reverse the fills that already happened.
2. The average price can move after you look. Each new fill changes executedQty and cummulativeQuoteQty. A report captured mid-fill is a snapshot, not a final receipt.

For a market order, partial fills are usually a matter of seconds, but they still happen when the order is larger than the best level. The order walks the book, consuming several prices. The spread and slippage guide explains why that walk costs more than the top-of-book quote.

Commission in a third asset

Many venues let the fee be paid in a platform token, a discount balance, or the quote asset. The report records the asset, not just the amount. Three consequences follow:

• The fee currency changes the balance you reconcile. A BTC fee leaves less BTC; a USDT fee leaves less USDT.
• A discount token is a position. Paying in BNB or OKX’s token consumes a balance that has its own price risk.
• Fee tiers are not the same as the rate on this fill. The rate applied depends on the pair, the tier and whether the order was maker or taker. The maker and taker guide covers the distinction; the execution report shows which rate was actually charged.

How to reconcile a report

A four-line reconciliation catches most errors:

1. Sum the fill quantities. The total must equal executedQty.
2. Sum price × quantity across fills. The total must equal cummulativeQuoteQty, allowing for the venue’s rounding.
3. Convert each commission to quote currency and add it. The result is the all-in cost or proceeds.
4. Compare the all-in figure with the balance change in the wallet or account statement.

If the three totals do not agree, the report is incomplete or the query returned a different order. That is a data problem, not a trading loss. Binance’s order query endpoints allow a specific order to be fetched by orderId or clientOrderId, and a FULL response returns the fills array needed for the check.

What the report does not tell you

An execution report is a record of fills, not a statement of profit. It does not include the market price at the time you decided to trade, the opportunity cost of a partial fill, or the tax treatment of the disposal. It also does not tell you whether the price was good relative to the market: a fill at your limit can be excellent or poor depending on what happened next.

What it does give you is a closed arithmetic loop. Quantity, quote amount, commission and status either reconcile or they do not. Building cost accounting on that loop is more reliable than building it on the price shown on the order ticket.