Tracking Dividends

Capitally has a full support for Dividends and other types of income, like Rent or Interest. You can track them manually by creating transactions, but for most market-traded assets the dividends will be handled automatically for you.

Automatic dividend trackingCopy

Capitally makes tracking your dividends a breeze with its automatic handling feature.

When you open a position in Capitally, the app does the heavy lifting for you. It automatically includes dividend transactions at their execution date for all market-traded assets. If you've set up taxes, Capitally uses the payment date to calculate the tax on your dividends.

Avoiding duplicatesCopy

If you prefer to add dividend transactions yourself (either one by one or through importing), don't worry about duplicates. Capitally is smart enough to prevent this. Here's how it works:

1. Capitally looks at the period between a dividend's ex-date and payment date, plus an extra 14 days.

2. If a dividend already exists within that timeframe, automatic dividends won't be added.

3. You can manually add dividends at any time. If there are any automatically added dividends that might cause duplicates, Capitally will remove them for you.

Confirming your dividendsCopy

Automatically added dividends are marked as unconfirmed at first. Once you've checked that the values match your broker statements, you can confirm them in two ways:

1. Individually: Open the transaction modal for a specific dividend and confirm it there.

2. In bulk: Select multiple dividends and use the "Confirm" option from the actions menu.

By confirming your dividends, you're ensuring your records are accurate and up-to-date.

Recording dividends paid in sharesCopy

Sometimes, companies offer dividends in the form of additional shares instead of cash. Capitally makes it easy to track these types of dividends too. Here's how you can log them:

1. Open the transaction editing modal for the dividend.

2. Click the option that says "Enable receiving income as asset and reinvesting."

3. Enter the quantity of shares you received as a dividend and any leftover cash (also known as residual cash)

Reinvested dividends and DRIPCopy

Many investors choose to reinvest their dividends, either manually or through a Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP). Capitally makes it easy to track these reinvestments.

Manually tracking reinvested dividendsCopy

1. Treat reinvested dividends the same way as dividends paid in shares (see above 👆 ).

2. In the original dividend transaction, set the number of shares bought with the proceeds.

3. Don't forget to include any leftover cash.

Automating dividend reinvestmentCopy

Capitally offers a way to fully automate tracking of reinvested dividends:

1. Edit the Asset or Account where you want dividends reinvested.

2. Open the "Positions" tab.

3. In the "Automatic dividend handling" option, enable reinvesting.

4. You can set different settings for each Account & Asset pair as well.

If you choose the Reinvest whole shares option, Capitally will use the dividend to buy full shares. Any leftover cash is recorded separately.

If your reinvestment plan offers a discount on the market price (common in many DRIPs), you can specify a 0-100% discount in the Reinvestment discount field.

Disabling automatic dividendsCopy

While Capitally's automatic dividend handling is a great feature, you might want to track dividends manually or simply not include them in your records. No problem! You can disable disable them for an Asset, an Account, or a specific Asset & Account pair:

1. Edit the Asset or Account you want to change.

2. Click on the "Positions" tab.

3. Find the "Automatic dividend handling" option.

4. Choose "Exclude Dividends" from the dropdown menu.

Upcoming and estimated dividendsCopy

Capitally doesn't just track your past dividends - it also helps you look into the future. Any future income will be reflected in all metrics, charts and displayed on transaction lists.

To see future dividends, check the widget on the dashboard, or simply select a future date range. For example:

• +1y (next year)

• -1y +1y (from a year ago to a year from now)

• max +1y (all history plus next year)

• 2023 2025 (specific year range)

Dividend statuses

Capitally uses the following statuses for dividends:

• Confirmed: Paid out and you've confirmed receiving it

• Unconfirmed: Paid out, but not yet confirmed by you

• Upcoming: Executed and will be paid out soon

• Declared: Officially announced future dividend

• Estimated: Capitally's prediction based on historical data

How future income is estimated?Copy

Capitally uses past income events to estimate future ones. This includes both your project history and market history.

What Gets Estimated? Dividends and rent income. Dividends are estimated at a price-per-share level, while Rent is estimated at the total value level.

Capitally needs at least three income events of similar size to detect a pattern. It will keep estimating future events unless the last event is more than a month late. For example, if you stop receiving monthly rent, Capitally will wait two months after the last payment before it stops estimating future income from that property.

Handling dividend taxesCopy

For more general information about tax handling, first check out the article about the Taxes support.

Capitally creates a Dividend Tax event based on two possible dates:

1. The Payment date of the dividend (if specified)

2. The Transaction date (if no payment date is given)

Tax withheld is not automatically calculated for dividends. You need to enter this information yourself:

1. Open the transaction details for the dividend

2. Find the "Tax Paid" field

3. Enter the amount of tax withheld by your broker or the company paying the dividend

Analyzing investment incomeCopy

Capitally offers several ways to analyze your dividend income. Let's explore them:

Dashboard includes two widgets summarizing the last year's yield and upcoming incomeIncome tab lets you explore all relevant metrics and chartsIncome Transactions let's you check specific dividends - both already paid out or estimated to be paid out in the futureX-Ray chart let's you directly compare income from investment types, markets, accounts, you name itCompare your whole portfolio returns to only those that bring income, by using "With Income" filter as a benchmark

Taxable Income Report let's you create a detailed statement to work with your accountant

Other types of incomeCopy

Capitally recognizes and helps you track other income types than dividends as well. All of them behave the same within the system and everything that applies to dividends applies to other income types as well. Let's look at what else you can monitor:

Real estate rentalCopy

If you're investing in real estate, you can track your rental income just like dividends. This feature allows you to:

• Log regular rental payments, along with fees and taxes paid

• Estimate future rental income based on past data

Interest couponsCopy

For investments that pay interest, such as bonds or deposits you can track interest payments.