[Kmymoney] how to handle reinvestment of dividend

[Jack]

On 2013.05.25 09:41, Gary Kirkpatrick wrote:
> 1) So I have an investment account with a linked brokerage account.   
> when i made a purchase of a bond I entered that transaction in the  
> investment account ledger.  KMM removed the case from the brokerage  
> account.  Nice-  an advantage of having an attached brokerage  
> account.  But now I get an dividend and I entered that into the  
> ledger of the brokerage acct-  again fine.  But now that reinvest  
> gets entered where?  Or somehow do I have to enter the transaction in  
> both accounts.

(I assume you mean cash and not case?)  Is this a dividend or a  
dividend reinvestment?  A plain dividend pays you cash, and in KMM that  
cash ends up in the associated brokerage account.  In the dividend  
transaction, there should be a field to specify the account, and it  
should already default to the brokerage account.  On the other hand, if  
it is a dividend reinvestment, then there is no cash - the dividend is  
used to buy more stock.

> 2) Second but related issue.  KMM allows you to reconcile the  
> brokerage account (but not the investment account).  However it is  
> showing me short the amount spent on the investment as the ending  
> balance of the accounts per the institution of includes the amount  
> spent on the investment.   Is there a proper way to reconcile these  
> two account?

Reconciling the brokerage account should be exactly the same as  
reconciling any savings or checking account.  First be sure that the  
starting balance is correct.  If this is a new account, then that is  
the opening balance of the account.  Then be sure all the appropriate  
transactions are present.  If the ending balance KMM shows you does not  
match when you start the reconciliation, that may be because some of  
the transactions are not marked, instead of already being marked as  
"cleared."  You can either be sure they are all "cleared" before  
starting the reconciliation, or just ignore that as long as the balance  
is correct at the end.

KMM actually does allow you to reconcile an investment account (I do it  
myself on a regular basis) but it actually doesn't make much sense, as  
1) the cash balance of an investment account is always $0, and 2) it  
doesn't mark transactions as "Reconciled" when it is done, probably  
because they are not purely cash transactions.   I have actually  
started a discussion about this on the developers mailing list to see  
if it might be able to work with the number or securities in an  
investment account instead of the amount of cash in other accounts.

Keep asking the questions.  The initial phase of using KMM is  
frequently a challange, but it really does get easier once you are set  
up and into a routine.

Jack