Investment Transactions
Investment transactions are entered and edited in the Ledgers view, as with transactions in other types of accounts. However, the fields shown will be different, and vary depending on the activity or transaction type. Investment transactions have some additional elements, described below.
The Activity for an investment transaction describes what type of action is happening to the security. The following activities are supported:
- Buy/Sell
Use to record the purchase or sale of an individual security. This action requires an account to transfer the funds from/to, which defaults to the Brokerage account, if one has been defined for this Investment account.
- Dividend/Yield/Interest Income
Also known as a “Cash Dividend,” this action is used when you receive an interest or dividend disbursement of cash from your security. This action also requires an account to transfer the funds to. The three terms are used interchangeably.
- Reinvest dividend
This is a dividend where the proceeds are used to purchase additional shares of the security.
- Add/Remove shares
A simple increase or decrease in the number of shares you own. This should be used very rarely, because it's uncommon for shares to just show up in your account (or to disappear) unless it's a purchase, sale, or dividend reinvestment. One use of these activities is for some situations KMyMoney does not natively handle, such as the exchange of some number of shares of a security for a different number of shares of a different security or different class of the same security.
- Split shares
This is used when the stock is split. Enter the ratio of the split in the “Split Ratio” field. For example, in a 3:2 split, enter 1.5. Reverse splits, where the ratio is less than one, such as 2:3, although uncommon, are also allowed.
Each investment transaction must be associated with an individual security. The dropdown shows all securities you own in the current Investment account - select the one for this transaction.
For any transaction which generates or requires money, you must enter the account where the money is transferred to/from. If your investment account has an associated Brokerage account, it is usually best to transfer the funds there. This applies to funds for purchase or sale of the security, as well as for fees paid or interest or dividends earned.
For buy, sell, and reinvestment transactions, the number of shares, the price per share, and the total amount of the transaction must be established. You can enter any two of these, and KMyMoney will calculate the third. It is usually best to enter just the total amount and the number of shares, because these are the known facts of the transaction. KMyMoney will automatically calculate the price per share. Note that there is only one entry field for the price, and it will be labeled “Transaction amount” or “Price/share” depending on the setting of the Price entry option when the investment was set up.
With many investment transactions you can include the fees (or commission) you paid the broker. 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. If you need to enter more than one fee for the transaction, you can use the Split Transactions feature. In this case, when you complete entering all the splits, the total amount of the fees will be shown to the right.