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

[Robert Tomsick]

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012, Jack wrote:

Thanks for the prompt reply!  Reponse inlined below....

> 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.
>> [... ineffective attempts at solutions removed ...]
>
> 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.

Well yes, I could delete one of them.  But that's sub-optimal for me for 
two reasons:

1) I have to do it every time I do automatic reinvestment (not a big deal 
-- I'm resigned to the fact that I'm probably going to have to do 
*something* every time...)

2) More importantly, heaven help me if I ever tell KMM to update my 
account with a full transaction history since inception.  Then -- AFAIK -- 
*all* of the deleted transactions will come back and it's off to the races 
again...

I could create a dummy account that the reinvested dividends pay into and 
the reinvestments themselves are funded from... but that seems like a 
rather round-about way of doing it.

> 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.

Oh, I don't think it's a problem with KMM per-se, but I am frustrated that 
none of the "obvious" solutions (matching transactions, etc.) work the way 
that I expected them to.  I agree that it's probably an issue with what 
the brokerage is producing -- but I'd like some input on what the "right" 
way to solve it is.

> 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.

I have already done so.  I was previously trying to debug an issue with 
GnuCash failing to connect to Scottrade's OFX endpoint (their techs were 
sympathetic, but ultimately unhelpful) so I ended up doing a fair number 
of requests with ofxconnect (a very, very useful tool, BTW.)

The OFX file is correct in that it corresponds exactly to what Scottrade 
displays in my account history (dividend and reinvestment of same listed 
separately.)

Further suggestions are welcome.

Also, as an aside, how is the "Reinvest Dividend" transaction type 
*supposed* to work?  The manual doesn't really explain it, and since not 
all of the fields are labeled clearly I wasn't quite sure on how I should 
go about using it (if at all.)

Thanks,
Rob