Created a new investment account with a brokerage. Price set to total transaction.
An Add Shares was used to create the beginning Share balance.
Then select New and Reinvest Dividends. I select the security (has to become associated, sub-account, with this new Investment Account. I enter the date, the total dollar value of the dividend, the number of shares purchased. The Enter button for the transaction stays greyed out. There are no fees or interest to input. I fill in the memo. Still the “enter” button to enter the transaction remains greyed out.
I cannot enter a divident reinvestment transaction!!
The Investment tracking side of KMyMoney just keeps getting worse and worse.
First, we know that there are problems with how KMM handles
Investments. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that there will be any
major changes in this area in the near future. That said, I have been
tracking dozens of stocks/bonds/mutual funds and multiple investment
firms for many years. Yes, I run into an occasional issue that needs
to be worked around, but I’ve managed. It’s not actually getting any
worse, you are just running into more of the issues 
In terms of dividend reinvestments, I do this all the time, Note that
if this is truly a dividend reinvestment, the money comes from
somewhere, and this is indicated in the Interest field. This allows
(requires?) you to specify what type of dividends are being paid. This
may not have much of a use in the short term, but knowing whether the
payment is simple dividend, long or short term capital gains, or
something else is worth tracking.
Before I started this entry, I created a category under Dividends for the security name. I selected that In the Interest field and it did not do any good. I still could not press “enter”.
I saved the prorgram, exited it and restarted it. I made the same entry again with the Dividend: Security selected from the category for the Interest field and it now works. IDK if the Category did not get registered until I saved and exited or what, but then it works now. I know it really doesn’t like you making any entry without a category specified.
Thanks for the help,
Bill
I wish I could explain what happened - it is the sort of thing I just
blame on the phase of the moon.
Just for a better understanding of of how KMM works - both categories
and securities within an Investment account are implemented internally
as accounts. Money always needs to come from somewhere and go
somewhere. With a standard check or cash transaction, it moves between
a checking or cash account and a Category. Transfer accounts move
money between two accounts. Investment buy and sell transactions are
like transfers. Money moves between a checking (Brokerage) account and
the security’s subaccount within the investment account. The
“currency” of that account is the equity, so the “price conversion”
from money to the number of shares is based on the price for that
security as specified in the transaction. I think you previously
talked about tracking the number of shares held, and that is exactly
what is tracked in a security sub-account of an investment account.
The reason you need a separate such sub-account for each investment
account is to separately track the number of shares you hold in that
account. There is indeed a single equity which represents the
underlying stock. One of the biggest problems here is terminology, and
indeed the terms equity and security are not used completely
consistently within KMM. Fortunately, it is usually (but not always)
clear which one is meant. The problem you mentioned previously about
needing to be careful when adding a security to an investment account
is that you can inadvertently create a second equity instead of using
the same one that already exists. I suspect that this is simply a side
effect of the original programmer not thinking about the possibility of
owning the same stock in two different investment accounts. There no
real harm done if you do create a double “equity,” other than
confusion and storing prices for both of them instead of just one.
I’ve made that mistake myself, and have gone through the process of
“consolidating.” Very annoying, perhaps bordering on painful, but
definitely possible.
In the short term (before any major redesign of how Investments are
handled) I’m very open to any concrete suggestions for improving the
documentation, which is actually my main role in the project. This
would primarily be changes to the handbook, but might include changes
or addition to wording on various forms and dialogs.
In terms of transactions needing a category - for investment buy and
sell transactions are essentially transfer transactions between a
checking account and an investment sub-account. Dividend/interest
transactions move money from a Category to a checking account. Add,
remove, and split transactions involve only the single investment
sub-account, changing the number of shares held. This is the first
time I’ve actually thought about it this way, but it seems these may be
the only valid non-balanced transactions allowed in KMM, as the shares
do not come from or go to another account, either as shares or as money.
Hopefully things are starting to make more sense.
Thanks, but one thing I have just run across that does not seem to go along with the user manual is a dividend reinvestment when there is an institution fee involved. I had a dividend reinvestment to enter. Lets say it was a dividend of $100 and the institution is ABCevest Inc. I put it in just like a dividend reinvestment without a fee. In the investment account I select “New” then set activity to: Reinvest Dividend, select the Security defined within that investment account (XYZ Inc Com). On the right, set the date, the number of shares bought as 28.572 and the Transaction Amount to $100. This is the total amount of the dividend awarded. The manual says “If you enter a category for the fee, then a field will be shown to the right where you can enter the amount of the fee.” I select the expense category (already setup) as “Expense: Investment: ABCevest Inc. Fee”. I pick another field, or press tab, but NO entry box appears to the right (under the Transaction Amount field) to enter the Fee. I put in the category in the “Interest” dropdown as “Income: Dividend: XYZ Inc Com”. I click on Memo. Still No field appears to the right of the Fee Category entry to be able to enter the Fee of $10 and the “Enter” button is greyed out.
I then put in a split fee where I could enter the $10 Fee with the Transaction amount as $100. Now “Enter” button is enabled. Because of the fee, my amount to invest is $100-$10= $90. When I enter it, the entry shows the dividend as $110, the Fee as $10, and the Value field as $110.
I had to change the Transaction amount to $90 to get the dividend to show as $100. This does not make since to me.
I got around this by depositing the $100 in the brokerage account as a dividend. Withdrawing the $10 ABCevest Inc Fee from the Brokerage account, then doing a buy with the $90 remaining in the brokerage account. This is more understandable to me a to actually what happened at the investment firm.
I pointed this out, because you said that you are interested from the user manual side of things, and this reinvest dividend action did not create a fee entry field to the right as the manual indicates. FYI.
As you see, I found another way to do this transaction so that it matches my statement from the investment firm.
Bill
I beg everyone’s pardon if I shouldn’t append to this old discussion… In the stable version of KMM (May 5 2024 date) a reinvested dividend has only 4 entries and they work wonderfully: date, #shares, Price/sh, and Total. Now as I try to use one of the Development versions (Master-3934) the entries have exploded to: date, #shares, Price/sh, Fees, Interest, and Total.
The problem: when I make a new entry (ctrl-insert) I choose “Reinvested Div” for the activity and the INTEREST line. I enter 10 for the # of shares and $6 for the price. But nothing is automatically calculated for the “interest” nor for the “total”. If I enter $60 in the Interest blank, the “Enter” key lights up. It used to be simple. What am I overlooking? thanks for your help. A
Yes, you really should have started a new thread, although I’m not quite certain whether it is essentially the same problem, or something different.
I suppose I’ve been using the Development version for so long that I don’t remember what changed. Also, for me, most of the time I am converting a dividend transaction (as imported) to a reinvest, and most of the fields are ok as imported. In any case, you need to enter the security, number of shares, price per share or total price (depending on configuration settings,) optional fee and category, and total interest and category. It may be more required fields than 5.1.3. Also, if it is truly a reinvestment, then the total will be $0, which is why a brokerage account is no longer required.
1 Like