How to set up order flow in Quantower

Footprint, volume profile, VWAP and an order-book heatmap are all part of the Quantower platform. Whether you can use them depends on two things, your licence and your data, so check those first and then turn each tool on.

Tool names below are the labels on the chart's volume analysis toolbar in Quantower 1.146.7. Licence details follow Quantower's own licence comparison and help pages, read on 14 October 2026. Menus and licences can change between versions; if something differs on your build, Quantower's pages are the reference.

Check two things first

Your licence. On Quantower's licence comparison, the free licence does not include the cluster chart (footprint), the volume profiles, VWAP, time statistics or the time histogram, and it allows two indicators per chart. DOM Surface (the heatmap), the TPO chart and Power Trades are listed for the All-in-One licence, and the table notes they can also be purchased separately. The Time & Sales panel and the API for custom indicators are in every licence.

Some brokers and some funded accounts come with a fuller Quantower licence. If Quantower came with your account, find out which licence it is before you pay for anything. Quantower's connections page shows which connections unlock its paid features.

Your data. The footprint, profiles, VWAP and Time & Sales are built from trades, so they need trade data from your connection, plus trade history for anything that happened before you opened the chart. The heatmap is built from the order book, so it needs depth of market (Level 2).

A one-minute check:

Open a chart and click the Magnifier icon in its upper right corner. A toolbar of volume analysis tools appears along the bottom of the chart.
Click Cluster. Green means it has downloaded its data; yellow means it is still downloading. If the tools are missing or it stays empty, look at the licence and the connection first.
Open a DOM Trader for the same symbol. If several prices on each side show resting size, your connection is sending depth of market.

Footprint: Cluster

Click Cluster on the toolbar. View → Imbalance gives the bid × ask layout, and Data type → Delta shows delta at each price. Settings, readability and what to do when it fills in slowly are on How to set up a footprint chart in Quantower.

Volume profile

Four buttons on the same toolbar draw volume profiles (Quantower's page):

Step profile builds one profile per fixed interval. Step period set to Day gives a profile for each day, and Sessions Template decides which hours count.
Left profile and Right profile draw a profile along the left or right side of the chart.
Custom profile is drawn over a range you choose, such as a balance area or a single impulse leg.

Each can show the POC and a Value Area (70% by default, adjustable), and Data type switches between volume, trades, delta and others. To see each day's value area on an intraday chart, use Step profile with Step period Day and a Sessions Template that matches the hours you trade.

VWAP

VWAP puts one or more VWAP lines on the chart.
Custom VWAP is anchored to a bar you pick, such as the open or a swing high.

Time & Sales and large trades

The Time & Sales panel lists every trade as it prints.
T&S on the chart toolbar (Historical Time & Sales in Quantower's help) lists the trades inside a bar you select.
Power Trades marks large volume traded in a short time. Every setting, with its default, is on Power Trades settings.

Time Statistics and Time Histogram, on the same toolbar, show each bar's volume as a table and as a vertical histogram.

Heatmap: DOM Surface

DOM Surface is a separate panel that draws the order book over time as a heatmap. Prices with more resting size are brighter, so large resting orders, and how they grow, shrink or disappear, are easier to follow than in a DOM table. It needs depth of market data.

Open it from the main menu, which appears when you click the Quantower logo on the main toolbar. Quantower's help files it under analytics panels (DOM Surface).

DOM levels count sets how many prices it shows on each side of the best bid and offer.
Maximal level2 size sets the size that gets full brightness, either Auto or Custom.
It also has colour modes (Monochome, as Quantower spells it, Bichrome and Heatmap) and histograms for Size, Cumulative size and Imbalance.

Every setting, one by one: Quantower DOM Surface.

Where OrderVane fits

Third-party indicators load on every Quantower licence, because the API for custom indicators is part of all of them. We checked the free licence ourselves: OrderVane loads there, draws, and counts as one of the two indicators that chart allows.

OrderVane builds its own marks from the trades and history your connection sends: big trades and absorption at the price they printed and volume shelves, and in Pro the previous session's VAH, POC and VAL and a Session Map window that sets the last five sessions and today on one price axis. How much of that you see depends on what your connection carries: which side each trade hit, and how much history it serves. OrderVane DOM, a separate window next to Quantower's DOM, needs depth of market, the same as the heatmap.

OrderVane adds order-flow markers on top of your Quantower charts.

See what it looks like · Lite $89 · Pro $129 · 14-day free trial