How to enter dividends?

[Jon Lapham]

Derek Atkins wrote:
> xfer from Income:Divideds -> stock/mutual-fund account

Derek-

Can you give this user guide section a quick read-through, I just added 
it to the Investments chapter.

-Jon

7.6. Dividends
Some companies or mutual funds pay periodic dividends to shareholders. 
Dividends are typically given in one of two ways, either they are 
automatically reinvested into the commodity or they are given as cash. 
Mutual funds are often setup to automatically reinvest the dividend, 
while common stock dividends usually pay cash.

If you receive the dividend in the form of an automatic reinvestment, 
the transaction to account for this should be handled within the stock 
or mutual fund account as income from "Income::Dividend" for the 
appropriate number of reinvested shares.

If the dividend is presented as cash, you should record the transaction 
directly in the bank account that received the money, as income from 
"Income::Dividends" with a note mentioning from which commodity it was 
derived. There is no simple way to show this transaction from within the 
stock or mutual fund account itself.

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  Jon Lapham  <lapham at extracta.com.br>          Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
  Work: Extracta Moléculas Naturais SA     http://www.extracta.com.br/
  Web: http://www.jandr.org/
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