Hi,
Just a quick question with how dividends are entered in Portfolio Performance.
When I add a dividend to a security, there is a small arrow next to the Shares field that allows me to automatically fill in the number of shares I hold for that security.
The issue is that this appears to use my current number of shares, rather than the number of shares I held on the relevant dividend date (Dividend Announcement Date).
For example:
- A dividend is announced/recorded two weeks ago.
- At that time, I owned 100 shares of the security.
- During the following two weeks, I purchase an additional 50 shares.
- The dividend is paid today.
- When I enter the dividend today and use the automatic Shares calculation, Portfolio Performance fills in 150 shares, because that is my current holding.
- However, the dividend should only apply to the 100 shares that were eligible for the dividend.
This becomes particularly problematic when regularly buying a security between the dividend record date and the payment date, because the automatically calculated dividend amount can be incorrect. Also, the Ex-Date option doesn’t fix the issue, even if set to the correct announcement date of that particular security.
Would it be possible for the automatic Shares calculation to use the number of shares held on the appropriate historical date (e.g. the dividend record/ex-dividend date) rather than the current holdings?
I’m not sure whether this is intended behavior or a bug, but it would be very useful if Portfolio Performance could automatically determine the eligible historical share count when entering a dividend.
Thanks!