Sauda book

Every trade a broker executes has to be recorded somewhere permanent, not just left inside the trading software. The sauda book is that record.

"Sauda" is simply the Hindi word for a deal or bargain, and the sauda book is the formal name — used in the regulations themselves — for the register of transactions: one line for every trade the broker has done, for every client, on every day.

It sits alongside the client ledger, the general ledger and the contract note as one of the core books a stock broker must keep under law.

The workbook (Chapter 3, section 3.4.4.1) lists the register of transactions (sauda book) among the books a broker must maintain under Rule 15 of the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules, 1957 and Regulation 15 of the SEBI (Stock Brokers) Regulations, 2026.

The sauda book must show, for each transaction effected: the name of the security, its value, its rates gross and net of brokerage, and the names of the clients involved.

Under Regulation 16 of the SEBI (Stock Brokers) Regulations, 2026, every stock broker must preserve the books of account and other records maintained under Regulation 15 — which includes the sauda book — for a minimum period of eight years.

A broker's sauda book for a single trading day carries an entry such as:

Here the gross rate of Rs 842.00 is what the exchange traded at; after deducting the broker's 0.15% brokerage, the net rate booked to the client's ledger is Rs 840.74. Multiplied across every trade of every client on every day, the sauda book becomes the master audit trail an inspecting official uses to cross-check contract notes, client ledgers and exchange trade files against each other.

If a regulator inspects the broker eight years and one day after this trade, the broker is under no further obligation to have preserved this particular entry — the eight-year clock under Regulation 16 has run out.

Chapter 3 (section 3.4.4, Accounting) lists the sauda book first among the books and records a broker must maintain, and the chapter's own sample questions test exactly this: one asks whether the sauda book needs to be kept for two years (it does not — the answer is eight years, under the current Stock Broker Regulations).

• Eight years, not two. A workbook sample question deliberately offers "2 years" as a wrong answer for how long the sauda book must be preserved.
• The sauda book records gross AND net-of-brokerage rates — a single "traded price" column is not enough to satisfy the requirement.
• It is a record of transactions, not of client funds or securities balances — those live in the client ledger and securities register instead.
• Do not confuse it with the contract note, which is the document sent to the client confirming the trade; the sauda book is the broker's own internal register covering every client's trades together.