[Kmymoney] Dividend reinvestment (Scottrade, imported via OFX)

[Jack]

On 2012.06.27 13:52, Robert Tomsick wrote:
> Hi all:
> 
> I have a question regarding dividends and dividend reinvestment that  
> I was hoping somebody might answer (or at least provide some hints.)
> 
> Here's the situation:
> 
> I have an account with the brokerage Scottrade.  I regularly import  
> my transactions via OFX (they provide an OFX endpoint).  This works  
> fine.
> 
> For assets for which I receive dividends, Scottrade generates two  
> transactions.  The first is identified by KMyMoney as being of the  
> type "Dividend".  This transaction lists an amount and the security  
> for which the dividend was issued, but does not seem to include any  
> other information (such as "Total").  (The transaction does include a  
> memo such as "DIVIDEND ON 42.230 SHARES OF FOOBAR @ .061" but I  
> believe this is generated by Scottrade, not KMyMoney.)
> 
> The second transaction is the re-investment one.  KMyMoney identifies  
> this as being of the type "Buy Shares" and correctly populates the  
> number of shares and the price, but the "Total" is listed as $0.00.
> 
> The first thing I tried was to accept the "Dividend" transaction,  
> however doing so would require me to have it pay in to the Brokerage  
> account -- which is not what actually happens (as far as Scottrade is  
> concerned.)  I could live with that, but then I'd have to mark the  
> "Buy Shares" transaction as coming from the brokerage account, and  
> that seems... I dunno, hack-ish?  I'd like the re-investments to be  
> marked as such.
> 
> I then tried changing the type of the "Buy Shares" transaction to  
> Reinvest Dividends.  That works fine, only that leaves the "Dividend"  
> transaction to be dealt with, but anything I do to get it to be  
> acceptable requires me to specify an account and if I use the  
> Brokerage account for that then I end up with an incorrect total  
> there (since the amount is never debited by the "Reinvest Dividends"  
> transaction.)
> 
> Finally, I tried matching the two transactions, but that only works  
> if the totals are equivalent -- and I can't seem to manage that  
> without manually-entering the information.
> 
> Since the above is confusing, here are some screenshots of the data  
> as it is provided by Scottrade.
> 
> The entries in the ledger:       
> http://www.tomsick.net/img/ledger-entry.png
> The Dividend transaction:        
> http://www.tomsick.net/img/dividend.png
> The reinvestment (Buy Shares):   
> http://www.tomsick.net/img/purchase.png
> 
> Any advice is welcome.  I absolutely love the rest of the program and  
> it's worked flawlessly for everything else I've thrown at it!
> 
> I'm running KMyMoney 4.6.2 (KDE Platform 4.8.3) as is currently  
> provided in Debian testing.

Robert,

You have it easy. :-)  For my account with Merrill Lynch, I get three  
transactions for a dividend reinvest.  One is the dividend, one is the  
purchase, and the third is the reinvest.  I don't actually remember  
what KMM recognizes them as, since none of them come in as an actual  
reinvestment, and I eventually gave up on trying to import the OFX, and  
I just do it all manually.  However, you might see if either one of the  
two imported transactions is easily edited and changed to a reinvest  
dividend transaction, perhaps just needing to add a field or two.  Then  
you could just delete the other transaction.   The second option would  
be to stick with a dividend and a buy shares pair of transactions.  It  
may still take some editing to be sure the amounts are equal, but that  
really is the essence of a dividend reinvestment.

Note that the problem is not really KMM, it is how brokerages actually  
generate OFX files, and although I have not really read the OFX  
standard, I suspect it does not really specify in enough detail how to  
handle this issue.

Open question:  does anybody have a brokerage where dividend  
reinvestment transactions import correctly to KMM as a single reinvest  
dividend transaction?

Minor point - if you have not already done so, just look at one of the  
OFX files in a text editor - it's plain text.

Jack