Reinvesting dividends and gains

Gary wrote in news:2008092808294216807-garyw1@hotmailcom:

The sequence here is wrong (IMNSHO). You don't buy before you "sell" or get dividends/cap gains. You first get the payout, then reinvest, lke you indicate under (1). If the download puts these things in this order, contact your broker to correct it (he may have other things on his mind right now, so don't hold your breath). Is it possible that you have your register ordered in a way other than by date?

I think method (2) disappeared several years ago. At least, I seem to remember it worked that way at one time, but in reality, the dividends are paid out, and the proceeds used to buy new stock. Quicken should follow reality .

Quicken just takes what the financial institution gives.

"John Pollard" wrote in news:jULDk.308123$TT4.283161 @attbi_s22:

I know, John, but is it correct in this case? If not, even if the outcome remains the same (I think the OP is making a mountain out of a mole hill, but so what?), is there a way to fix this?

I agree, I've never cared about the order of transactions for a given date.

You can delete the Buy, then re-enter it. That should cause it to follow the dividend in the "Transactions" list (at least in newer versions of Q).

But I do it differently: I never accept the Dividend transaction; and I modify the Buy transaction to be a Reinvest transaction. I only see these type transactions from Brokerage accounts, not from Mutual Fund accounts.

Do you have accounts where a fund produces an ordinary dividend and capital gains but only reports a single number of shares that is reinvested? I have one account where this is how my statement reads. As a result, I end up with multiple Income Transactions plus a buy so rounding doesn't distort Quicken's data.

Would you know of any "tricks" to handle this better?

Mike

Mike Blake-Knox wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@knology.net:

That's how Fidelity reports things. I made up a small spreadsheet calculating the shares associated with the stcg, ltcg & divds. It's really simple. If I should post it somewhere, tell me where a small excel sheet would be accepted.

That sounds unfriendly.

But if it's Fidelity, then that's par for the course with them.

I doubt I can do better than Han's suggestion.

You know the total number of shares you got for the the two combined dividends, but you don't know exactly how many shares each dividend purchased, is that correct? And you know the price/share for the "single" purchase?

The following is based on the assumption that the number of shares purchased with each dividend isn't important: the amount of each dividend is important, and the total number of shares purchased with the total of the dividends is important ... but it shouldn't matter how many shares you got for the ordinary dividend and how many for the LT dividend. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong here.

Suppose you use a Reinvest transaction and put the ordinary dividend amount in the appropriate box, then use the known price/share to compute the number of ordinary dividend shares purchased with that dividend. Then you enter the amount of the LT dividend and let it purchase the remaining shares. This produces two reinvestment transactions in your investment account "register".

Does that create a problem for you? Or is it more work than what you're already doing?