New User - importing generic data

[FrogDog]

Specifically relating to the "Income" properties and dividend imports. First, I want to import the last years worth of dividend payments received. I have checked the setup for that, but what I cannot find is whether the ANUM value when importing a payment received is the "total" payment or the per share value?

Second - is there a way to import the Income properties of each stock? I have MANY holdings and it will be extremely laborious to have to enter all manually (as each will have either 4 or 12 dates in a year where payments exist). Sorry if the answers exist elsewhere - I have been searching for 3 days throughout the forum and cannot find these answers.

Need to add - just ran a test and imported Dividend payments in the following format:
ED,SYMB,TRAN,ANUM,BNUM.CNUM and got unexpected results. Test data was as follows where ANUM was the dividend per share value:
20210601 FTS.TO DIST_D 0.505 0 0
So when imported, it did correctly calculate the dividend (50 shares at 0.505= 25.25) BUT it also added another dividend transaction at 0.505. I do not have it set to reinvest, so it wasn't that. Why would it add that?

[Mark]

Hi FrogDog,

but what I cannot find is whether the ANUM value when importing a payment received is the "total" payment or the per share value?

It is the total payment.

Second - is there a way to import the Income properties of each stock? I have MANY holdings and it will be extremely laborious to have to enter all manually (as each will have either 4 or 12 dates in a year where payments exist). Sorry if the answers exist elsewhere - I have been searching for 3 days throughout the forum and cannot find these answers.

You can import income properties of bonds, but not stocks. See the keys that start with "BOND". If you don't want to assign these properties, it doesn't affect any calculations, other than predicted future income payments, like in the Income Schedule report/graph.

Need to add - just ran a test and imported Dividend payments in the following format:
ED,SYMB,TRAN,ANUM,BNUM.CNUM and got unexpected results. Test data was as follows where ANUM was the dividend per share value:
20210601 FTS.TO DIST_D 0.505 0 0
So when imported, it did correctly calculate the dividend (50 shares at 0.505= 25.25) BUT it also added another dividend transaction at 0.505. I do not have it set to reinvest, so it wasn't that. Why would it add that?

Did you have commas between the fields in your data? Your post shows spaces. Since the format string separates fields with commas, your data should match this.

I would expect the above (if it had commas) to import a distributed dividend of $0.505 total.

[FrogDog]

Okay thanks Mark. It is a CSV file so comma delimited.

When I first ran the test it put both the 0.505 amount as a transaction in the stock card, and another line with the calculated amount of 25.50. I removed all those transactions (there was another stock I was testing with it), and when I imported the second time only got the 0.505. As I made no changes to the import structure or the file, I'm not sure why it had the 25.50 as a second transaction line. Must have been a gremlin Regardless, understand now and will try on a larger sample. update: believe it was a duplication due to test portfolio being used having old info, so all good on the import.

So I guess I need to setup the income on every stock individually - if I read right, that is just for forward looking reports, so if the dividend changes I would have to go in and manually adjust it for forward income reporting - is that correct? And it will not "book" based on this info, I will have to physically book any dividend or interest payments myself - correct?

[Mark]

Hi FrogDog,

Whether or not you record the income properties, you always have to record the dividends as transactions. Nothing is automatically recorded based on these properties. These properties are only used for showing future expected income in the "Income Schedule" graph/report. I suspect most people do not bother recording these income properties, but can be useful if you'd like to try and forecast your future income.

[m4boys27]

Well, I do try to forecast income. I do spend a lot of time tracking forward dividends and manually entering the data into FM. It does work, but it's very time consuming. It sure would be nice to be able to import forward dividend data. I've tried web scraping tools for yahoo finance, but they keep changing the web pages to make it difficult.

The best way I've found so far is to open a free account on Seeking Alpha, enter my investments, and download the Dividend table. I then export a report from FM that shows projected annual dividend and # shares, divide than in excel to get dividend per share, then compare that to the data from Seeking Alpha. If I see a change, I manually enter it into FM, then rerun a report to see my new projected annual income.

It works, but I really wish FM would do this for me.

I appreciate all that the FM tool does for me to aggregate multiple accounts and provide a variety of reports that I can export into Excel to do what I need. But this added feature would make me appreciate it even more!

[Mark]

Hi m4boys27,

Okay, understood, thanks for the feedback.