Signal Magician now offers Performance Billing plugin which can calculate monthly performance fees of every managed trading account based on a high watermark method.

The new Signal Magician also includes basic affiliate tracking functions, enhanced security functions, EA Licensing module, and many more.

What’s new in the Signal Magician 1.9.8?

Here’s a full list of new features in the Signal Magician 1.9.8:

  • Performance Billing with invoicing (based on High Water Mark);
  • Sign-In Code for better security (by email);
  • Stripe integration upgraded to comply with the new 3D Secure 2 authentication standard;
  • Offers – an easy way of connecting your website payment links with Signal Magician;
  • MailChimp integration upgraded to the new API version;
  • Enhanced data center connection algorithm to improve trade copying on low-quality internet connections;
  • Trade Filters for Signal Providers (ignore first X open trades, copy trades only when SP is in X% drawdown);
  • Payments and Subscriptions list;
  • Basic affiliate functionalities with automatic payouts calculation;
  • EA Licensing module to protect your MT4 Apps with a License Key; (Sold separately)
  • PHP 7 ready (make sure your hosting provider can install php-memcache for PHP 7);

Other improvements in Signal Magician 1.9.8:

  • Displays Windows Username and IP address of last EA connection;
  • Displays a floating Profit/Loss and open trades of MT4 in real-time;
  • Stores MT4 deposit and withdrawal information on the SM trade history;
  • MT4 passwords stored on the SM panel database is now encrypted;
  • You can restrict from what IP addresses admin can log in;
  • Allows setting a maximum Lot Allocation allowed;
  • Smoother workflow with incorrect MT4 login info;
  • Allows searching for customers with missing or incorrect MT4 login info;
  • You can have a Partners List on the registration form;
  • Dashboard with AuM and Performance summary grouped by currency;
  • CSV export of Users;

SM Client EA changes and new features:

  • Netting on FIFO accounts;
  • Advanced Client EA can take profit when equity grows by X% (TakeProfitWhenEquityGrowsByXPercent);
  • Shows the speed of your computer and internet connection;
  • Set Client EA to not manage trades opened before X (date/time) (DontManageTradesOpenedBefore);
  • Leverage of a client account affects the lot size to protect client account capital;
  • Advanced Client EA allows to choose what to do when an account reaches max trade limit – ignore new trades, or delay new trades (IfMaxTradesReached);
  • Delay to copy trades when the market is closed or broker is performing a rollover;

Now let’s take a look closer to the most important new features added to the Signal Magician.

Here’s a video presentation where I discuss every new feature in Signal Magician.

If you prefer the text version then continue reading.

Performance Billing based on a High Water Mark

 Previous month Performance Fees calculated based on a High Water Mark including carry forward loss, deposits, and withdrawals.
Previous month Performance Fees calculated based on a High Water Mark including carry forward loss, deposits, and withdrawals.

Performance Billing plugin (PB) calculates monthly performance fees for each trading account based on a High Water Mark method. All calculations include deposits and withdrawals to make it fair for the customer and the trader.

PB plugin recalculates high watermark with every deposit or withdrawal and in case of a losing month, the system will set a carry forward loss, which is what the trader needs to make back, in order to collect future performance fees.

You can set what performance fee you are going to charge every month, for example, 20%, and there’s an option to set individual fee size for each customer should you want to charge them more or less than others.

PB plugin uses all trades uploaded to the SM web panel by the Client EA to calculate performance fees and it won’t take 3rd party trades into account.

The system tracks the high-watermark level for each trading account to make it fair for the customers and not charge them for the months were no net profit was made.

PB plugin performs performance fee calculations on the 2nd day of each month and includes all uploaded Client EA transactions from the previous month.

You can export Performance Fees to a CSV file so you can upload it to Xero or any other accounting software which accepts CSV files.

If you don’t have your own accounting software then PB plugin can create invoices for each customer on the SM system. When customers pay the invoices outside the system through a bank transfer or any other payment system, you can then go and mark these invoices as “PAID” on the SM system.

If you are using Stripe and have it connected with your Signal Magician, then customers can pay performance fees invoices with a bank card and they will be automatically marked as “PAID” on the system.

Sign-In Code by email

Sign-In Code settings on the Signal Magician panel.
Sign-In Code settings on the Signal Magician panel.

The Sign-In Code is an extra security layer to protect user accounts. You can enable the Sign-In Code only when all user accounts have a valid email address assigned.

You can enable Sign-In Code for everyone, or everyone excluding Administrator accounts.

When users try to sign in to their account, the system will email them a one-time authentication code. Sign-in will be approved only when the user enters the code into the sign-in form.

Stripe integration upgraded (3D Secure 2)

We’ve implemented mandatory changes to how Stripe integrates with Signal Magician in version 1.9.8. It was done to make this integration SCA-READY by using the Stripe Checkout server integration to collect dynamic one-time payments and initiate subscriptions.

Stripe hosted checkout page which supports 3D Secure 2 new authentication standard.
Stripe hosted checkout page which supports 3D Secure 2 new authentication standard.

If your Signal Magician already is connected with Stripe, you’ll have to implement a few changes explained in this tutorial.

As of September 2019, a regulation called Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requires businesses in Europe to request additional customer authentication for online payments. Using the new Payment Intent and Setup Intent APIs, Checkout fully supports SCA—including exemption logic—and ensures that you only ask customers to provide additional authentication when strictly necessary.

Learn more about SCA and how it might impact your business.

Offers – an easy way of connecting your website payment links with Signal Magician

Creating a new Offer on Signal Magician to link with Stripe and PayPal payment plans.
Creating a new Offer on Signal Magician to link with Stripe and PayPal payment plans.

Offers tell the Signal Magician which products or services it should enable when a customer makes a purchase through your website.

Each Offer must link to a specific pricing plan on your website through Stripe, ClickBank, or PayPal. This is how the system knows which Offer it needs to trigger after the purchase.

Useful tutorials:

Trade Filters for Signal Providers

In the new Signal Magician, Admins can create trade filter rules to delay trades from Signal Providers.

At the moment there are two trade filters available:

  • Followers ignore X open trades per pair;
  • Followers copy trades only when Signal Provider account is in X% drawdown;

Example of the “ignore X open trades per pair” filter.

Creating a trade filter on Signal Magician
Creating a trade filter on Signal Magician

1) For EURUSD we set to ignore 2 open trades.
2) For GBPUSD we set to ignore one open trade.

This is set for a specific Signal Provider account and will apply to all client accounts following this particular SP.

The Client EA would copy EURUSD trades only when there are 3 or more open EURUSD trades on the SP. In other words, Client EA will skip 2 open trades on the SP.

Also, if SP has one open GBPUSD trade only then Client EA will not copy that. It will copy only when a 2nd, 3rd, or more trades are opened on the SP.

This counter works individually for each pair and includes only open trades. Closed trades do not count, meaning if the master account has 2 open trades, then close both trades and open 3 more trades, the Client EA will copy only one trade (the 3rd trade from open trades list) only.

Example of “copy trades only when SP account is in X% drawdown”.

Creating a trade filter on Signal Magician
Creating a trade filter on Signal Magician.

For example, a Signal Provider account is set to allow clients to copy his trades only when the SP account is in a 20% drawdown. This is equivalent to SP account equity at 80% of the balance.

If the account’s balance is $10,000 then all clients will start copying trades only when masters equity goes down to $8,000 or below.

This will be set for the SP account and will apply for all client accounts who are following this particular Signal Provider.

Payments and Subscriptions List

Signal Magician now stores every subscription created and payment received from your integrated payment processor.

Payments and Subscriptions list are available for admins and customers.

Payments List on Signal Magician
Payments List on Signal Magician
Subscriptions List on Signal Magician
Subscriptions List on Signal Magician

Subscriptions created through Stripe can be canceled directly through the Signal Magician panel by customer or admin.

Basic affiliate functionalities with automatic payouts calculation

Essential affiliate functions in the Signal Magician
Essential affiliate functions in the Signal Magician

Signal Magician has essential Affiliate Tools for tracking sales introduced by your affiliate partners.

SM provides you with customized HTML code for your PayPal Hosted buttons. This code creates tracking cookies for tracking which affiliate partner you must reward with commissions for the sale.

If the sale is for a recurring product, the SM affiliate system will keep assigning each recurring payment for the same affiliate partner until the end of that particular subscription. It means affiliates will get paid commissions not just for the first subscription payment, but for all payments until the end of that subscription.

Important to note, that Signal Magician Affiliate Program does not do payouts to your affiliates, but tracks all the sales and commissions so you can see how much commissions you owe to each partner.

Every customer on your Users list can be an affiliate. It means everyone on your system will have their affiliate link and be able to promote your services.

If a customer gets attached to the wrong affiliate, an Admin can change this, and this would take effect for any upcoming sales.

You can set a different % share for each affiliate or use the default % share.

SM Affiliate Tools does not offer detailed reports or statistics, but Admin can see how many sales each affiliate made and the amount of money they’ve earned.

Every week SM will calculate for payouts, and if the minimum payout amount is met for any affiliate, you’ll see a payout ticket created.

After you make payments manually, you have to mark their payout ticket as paid on the SM system.

PHP 7 Ready

In 2019 lots of web-servers got upgraded and now using PHP 7 instead of an older PHP 5.6 version. While PHP 5.6 is still available and will be so for some time, it is wise to move to PHP 7 in 2020.

However, the problem with moving to PHP 7 is that it is a bit stubborn to work with the php-memcache module which is required for Signal Magician. Well, it is actually php-memcache that hasn’t been upgraded for a few years now, unfortunately.

Many hosting providers simply tell you that it’s not possible to have PHP 7 and php-memcache, but that is not true. The LiquidWeb hosting provider was very helpful for us and they have made php-memcache work with PHP 7. I do not know how they did it, to be honest, but they did it.

So before upgrading to PHP 7 double-check with your hosting provider is they can install php-memcache module (the one without “d” at the end) with PHP 7.0.

Important to note, that SM is not yet ready for PHP 7.2 or higher, so you should look at PHP 7.0 only if your hosting provider support php-memcache with it.

So while moving to PHP 7.0 might be problematic for Signal Magician owners, we are working to improve this situation.

If your hosting provider will force you to upgrade to PHP 7 and cannot provide php-memcache with it, just let us know and we’ll recommend another hosting provider.

EA Licensing module to protect your MT4 Apps with a License Key (sold separately)

EA Licensing module in Signal Magician
EA Licensing module in Signal Magician

“EA Licensing” module (EAL) allows you to protect MT4 Expert Advisors and Indicators with a License Key which has an expiry date and is limited to work only on a certain amount of MT4 accounts.

“EA Licensing” comes as an additional module for the Signal Magician system and is sold separately. Contact us for the price quote if you are interested to use EAL.

All customers can have access to any of your Expert Advisors, Indicators or copy trading signals because everything is on the same portal.

For example, if Mark purchases only EA, he won’t get access to trade copier signals. If John subscribes only to a trade copier, he won’t get the EA. And of course, users will be able to purchase access to multiple services too so they can enjoy your trade copier signals, Expert Advisors and Indicators at the same time under one username.

The EAL system is fully automated, and you can connect it with Stripe, ClickBank or PayPal hosted buttons. Right after purchase, a Welcome email is sent automatically with the information on how to access the product.

To protect your EAs and indicators with a License Key, you link them to the Signal Magician system by adding an MQL4 code snippet to your EA. You do not need to reveal your EA source code to anyone. EA will be locked per MT4 account basis which means you set the amount of how many MT4 accounts are allowed for each EA license.

Read more about the EA Licensing module.

Other Signal Magician Improvements

We’ve added many smaller improvements and features into the new Signal Magician. Let’s look closer at them too.

Displays Windows Username and IP address of last EA connection

IP address and Windows username where Client EA is running

When you know the IP address and Windows username of the VPS server or computer on which the Client EA or Server EA is running, it makes it very convenient to locate it. This is very useful when you are hosting MT4 terminals yourself and manage lots of VPS servers with lots of MT4 accounts.

Displays a floating Profit/Loss and open trades of MT4 in real-time

Floating P/L and other MT4 account info in real-time
Floating P/L and other MT4 account info in real-time

If your Signal Magician is using MemCache then it will show a floating Profit/Loss and open trade count of each online MT4 account in real-time. If you don’t use MemCache, this information will be delayed by around 60 seconds.

Stores MT4 deposit and withdrawal information on the SM trade history

Deposits and Withdrawals
Deposits and Withdrawals

Now you can know when users deposit or withdraw the money from their accounts.

This information is also essential for the Performance Billing plugin so that it can calculate High Water Mark for each account.

MT4 passwords stored on the SM panel database is now encrypted

MT4 passwords are hidden and on the database, they are stored in an encrypted format.
MT4 passwords are hidden and on the database, they are stored in an encrypted format.

To raise the security standards for the Signal Magician, all MT4 password stored on the database are encrypted now. On the SM web panel, passwords are hidden by default and the user can see it by enabling the “Show password” option on the right.

An invisible Supervisor account

The idea of an invisible Supervisor account is to have control of every other account on the SM panel. This is very useful if you have a team of people working for you and they all need an admin account to the SM panel.

As admins, they can cut other users off the system, but not the Supervisor account. Admin accounts won’t even see that the Supervisor account exists and you will have full control over all admin accounts.

Useful tutorial: How to create an invisible Supervisor account

You can restrict from what IP addresses admin can log in

A list of IP addresses from where this admin account is allowed to log into the Signal Magician panel.
A list of IP addresses from where this admin account is allowed to log into the Signal Magician panel.

If you are afraid that someone can steal your admin password and access your SM panel then you’ll love this new security add-on.

This security add-on is hidden from everyone except the Supervisor account. When you log in as a Supervisor you’ll be able to create a list of IP addresses from where each admin account is allowed to access the SM panel. Just be careful not to cut yourself out and include your own IP address 🙂

Useful tutorial: How to create an invisible Supervisor account

Allows setting a maximum Lot Allocation allowed

Setting the limit on maximum allowed Lot Allocation for clients following this Signal Provider.
Setting the limit on maximum allowed Lot Allocation for clients following this Signal Provider.

A handy option in the new Signal Magician is the ability to limit the maximum Lot Allocation for client accounts.

This way, you protect the accounts of your customers. We have to admit that people usually set too high risk on their trading account, and that becomes one of the main reasons they lose money.

We have seen this too many times, and we want to help you avoid this unfortunate experience.

Better to have a not so happy customer for not letting him risk 2X or 3X on your trades than having an angry customer because he lost all his capital.

Smoother workflow with incorrect MT4 login info

Face it, one of the most frustrating moments when setting up a new MT4 account for copy trading is to find out a customer submitted incorrect MT4 login credentials.

Mistakes happen, we understand it, but still, it is a frustrating everyday experience for some Signal Magician owners and we’ve created something to help them.

When admin finds out that the MT4 login credentials for a particular customer are incorrect, he can notify that user in just a few clicks automatically marking these login details as incorrect.

In the Connect MT4 Account tab on the user’s profile page, there’s an option to compose a new message in a few clicks. The email message is generated from the email template which you can edit to suit your needs on the Email Templates page.

Compose a new message about incorrect MT4 login credentials
Compose a new message about incorrect MT4 login credentials
A ready-made template to notify users about incorrect MT4 login details.
A ready-made template to notify users about incorrect MT4 login details.

Just like that, you can send a notification to the user about incorrect MT4 login info.

Also, sending such a message will also mark this user’s MT4 login details as incorrect and will display a warning message until they are updated. This warning message is visible to the admin and the customer when he logs into the SM panel.

A warning message alerting about incorrect MT4 login details for a specific user.
A warning message alerting about incorrect MT4 login details for a specific user.

Allows searching for customers with missing or incorrect MT4 login info

Searching for users with missing mt4 login credentials

Just as incorrect login details, missing MT4 login details are irritating as well. When a customer signs up for your service, you want to connect him to copy trading as soon as possible.

But when your User base gets filled with a few hundred of abandoned usernames with missing MT4 login details, you have to take action.

However, you do not have time going through thousands of customer profiles looking for the ones that did not submit MT4 login info.

That is why we’ve implemented an option to search for users who did not submit MT4 login credentials, or you marked them as incorrect previously.

Composing a message about missing MT4 login credentials

And the option to compose an email notification about missing login info in a few clicks helps to do the work faster.

You can have a Partners List on the registration form

Partners list on the registration form
Partners list on the registration form

If you have affiliate partners sending you customers, you may want to give an option for your customers to choose an introducing partner on the registration form.

Including this affiliate Partner on the registration form.
Including this affiliate Partner on the registration form.

You can create a so-called Partners List and add every affiliate partner you have on your system.

Dashboard with AuM and Performance summary grouped by currency

 Dashboard showing Assets Under Management (AuM) and trading performance stats.
Dashboard showing Assets Under Management (AuM) and trading performance stats.

The new Signal Magician wants you to know how well you are doing with your copy trading business. For this reason, you can see how many Assets Under Management (AuM) you currently have and what your trading performance is.

The system groups all stats by currency, so if you have trading accounts with different currencies, you’ll see multiple categories.

CSV export of Users

Export CSV button

Now you can export Users list into a CSV file format.

This function exports the user list according to your search fields. It means you can run your search first to find what you are looking for and then use the export button to export those results into a CSV file.

Summary

The new Signal Magician 1.9.8 has a variety of new features and improvements. Running a copy trading business is now easier than before.

Tell me, which new feature you like the most? Write your opinion in the comment section below.


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