Tracking Dividends

Capitally has a full support for Dividends and other types of income, like Rent or Interest. You can track them manually by creating transactions, but for most market-traded assets the dividends will be handled automatically for you.

Automatic dividend tracking

Capitally makes tracking your dividends a breeze with its automatic handling feature.

When you open a position in Capitally, the app does the heavy lifting for you. It automatically includes dividend transactions at their execution date for all market-traded assets. If you've set up taxes, Capitally uses the payment date to calculate the tax on your dividends.

Setting up withholding tax on automatic dividends

By default, automatic dividends won't have any withheld tax applied. You can configure it by doing the following:

1. Edit the Asset or Account where you want the tax applied.
2. Open the "Positions" tab.
3. Set the "Tax paid on automatic income" to the required tax percentage.

This percentage applies only to the dividends Capitally generates. It never changes a transaction that came in from a broker file — see Importing dividends and withholding tax.

Avoiding duplicates

If you add dividend transactions yourself, one by one or by importing them, Capitally deduplicates them for you. It looks at the period from a dividend's ex-date to its payment date, plus an extra 14 days. If a dividend already exists in that window, no automatic one is added — and if you add or import one later, the automatic dividend that would duplicate it is removed.

Dividends imported from a broker file or CSV count as confirmed, and take priority over the unconfirmed ones generated from market data. The record closest to your tax document is the one that survives.

Two separate mechanisms are at work here. The ex-date-to-payment-date window plus 14 days is what suppresses an automatic dividend. An imported row is matched against what you already have on asset, account and broker reference — or, when the file carries no reference, on asset, account, transaction type, date and quantity. That second rule is what decides whether re-importing an overlapping statement adds a dividend twice: see Duplicates and re-importing.

When deduplication doesn't work

Two situations fall outside that window, and both leave an unconfirmed dividend sitting next to your imported one, inflating the cash balance:

• Market data has no payment date for the security, so the window is narrower than the real gap between ex-date and payout.
• The broker paid significantly later than expected. Brokers that report only the payment date (Swissquote, for example) can land a month past the ex-date.

A third case looks the same but has a different cause: an automatic dividend can appear on a position you had already closed before the ex-date.

To check, open the transactions view, filter by dividends, and look for two entries for the same payout, or for a dividend on a position you did not hold at that ex-date. To fix it, delete the automatic (unconfirmed) entry, or edit it on the list to match your statement.

Editing automatic dividends

Every field on a dividend is editable — total value, value per share, date, payment date, tax paid (withheld) and fees — so an automatic dividend can be made to match exactly what your broker paid. Adjust the amount down to what you actually received, enter the withheld tax and any fee, and set the date to the day the cash arrived.

The moment you edit an automatically generated dividend it becomes a manual transaction, and Capitally never modifies it again. That means you can safely trim, or zero out, a dividend you weren't entitled to — on shares held for only part of the period, for instance — without the app restoring it later.

One consequence: on an automatic dividend the share-quantity field is used only to compute the initial value. Once the transaction has been edited, changing that quantity has no further effect on the amount.

To use your own numbers throughout, you have two routes: edit the automatic dividends to match your records, or delete them and import from your own source. If you delete them, see Disabling automatic dividends to stop them being generated again.

Confirming your dividends

Automatically added dividends are marked as unconfirmed at first. Once you've checked that the values match your broker statements, you can confirm them in two ways:

1. Individually: Open the transaction modal for a specific dividend and confirm it there.
2. In bulk: Select multiple dividends and use the "Confirm" option from the actions menu.

By confirming your dividends, you're ensuring your records are accurate and up-to-date.

Dividend dates: ex-date vs payment date

The transaction Date on a dividend is the ex-dividend date, while most brokers display the payment date — the day the cash lands. The two can be days or weeks apart: a December ex-date is often paid in February. The Payment Date column shows the payment date supplied by market data, and falls back to the ex-date when the provider has none.

That fallback is by design, not a data error. Providers sometimes carry a payment date for only some listings of the same company: ASML has one on the US OTC listing (ASMLF) but not on the Amsterdam listing (ASML.AS). Dividends imported from a broker that supplies both dates, such as IBKR, keep both.

Amounts differ for a related reason. Capitally records the gross declared amount per share; brokers usually show the net after withholding tax. The per-share figure should match your broker's, and the totals will differ by the tax withheld.

The payment date is freely editable on any dividend. It is worth setting when the two dates straddle a year end, because the payment date decides which tax year the dividend falls into — see Handling dividend taxes.

Recording dividends paid in shares

Sometimes, companies offer dividends in the form of additional shares instead of cash. Capitally makes it easy to track these types of dividends too. Here's how you can log them:

1. Open the transaction editing modal for the dividend.
2. Click the option that says Show more (income in shares)
3. Enter the quantity of shares you received as a dividend and any leftover cash (also known as residual cash)

Dividend as Return of Capital

Some distributions are classified as Return of Capital (RoC) rather than income. This is common with REITs, MLPs, income trusts, and some ETFs. Instead of being taxable income, Return of Capital reduces your cost basis in the investment.

Capitally never creates Return of Capital transactions for you. Automatic generation covers dividends only, because whether a distribution is RoC — and how much of it — is settled by the payer's year-end tax statement, which market data doesn't carry. Record it yourself on the dividend transaction as described below, or map a Return of Capital column when importing from your broker (see the Transaction Properties Reference).

Recording a Return of Capital distribution

1. Create or edit a Dividend transaction
2. Click "Show more (return of capital and income in shares)"
3. Enter the Return of Capital portion in the Return of Capital field

If the entire distribution is Return of Capital, you can leave the Value field empty and only fill in the Return of Capital amount. If part of the distribution is regular dividend income and part is Return of Capital, enter the total distribution in the Value field and the RoC portion in the Return of Capital field.

How it affects your position

• Your cost basis is reduced proportionally across all open lots
• No income is recognized for the RoC portion
• If the Return of Capital exceeds your remaining cost basis, the excess is automatically treated as income (since cost basis cannot go below zero)
• Multiple RoC distributions reduce basis cumulatively over time

For recording spinoffs and liquidation distributions that involve Return of Capital, see Recording Corporate Events.

Reinvested dividends and DRIP

Many investors choose to reinvest their dividends, either manually or through a Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP). Capitally makes it easy to track these reinvestments.

Manually tracking reinvested dividends

1. Treat reinvested dividends the same way as dividends paid in shares (see above 👆 ).
2. In the original dividend transaction, set the number of shares bought with the proceeds.
3. Don't forget to include any leftover cash.

Automating dividend reinvestment

Capitally offers a way to fully automate tracking of reinvested dividends:

1. Edit the Asset or Account where you want dividends reinvested.
2. Open the "Positions" tab.
3. In the "Automatic dividend handling" option, enable reinvesting.
4. You can set different settings for each Account & Asset pair as well.

If you choose the Reinvest whole shares option, Capitally will use the dividend to buy full shares. Any leftover cash is recorded separately.

If your reinvestment plan offers a discount on the market price (common in many DRIPs), you can specify a 0-100% discount in the Reinvestment discount field.

Reinvesting only future dividends

To keep past dividends as cash and reinvest only from now on: turn reinvestment off, confirm all past dividend transactions, then turn reinvestment back on. Only dividends that arrive after that point are reinvested — the confirmed ones stay as they are.

The cash side of a reinvested dividend

You won't see a credit and then a debit in your cash account for a reinvested dividend. Capitally assumes the money never touches the account, and for performance reasons it doesn't create cash operations that net to zero within a single day. The only cash that shows up is the residual — the part of the payout that didn't divide evenly into whole shares.

Keeping reinvestments accurate

Capitally prices reinvestments from market data, so the result can differ slightly from your broker's actual DRIP: a different execution price, a plan discount, or a day's timing. The design intent is that you import from your broker every month or two and let Capitally estimate in between, which keeps the drift small. Importing also confirms the estimated transactions and replaces their values with your broker's.

Two things an import won't assemble for you yet:

• A DRIP exported as three rows — dividend, tax withheld, reinvestment buy — arrives as three separate transactions. Add the reinvestment Buy yourself, or map the pair in a custom import template.
• Money market funds that hold a $1 price and pay distributions as extra shares need two transactions, a Dividend and a Buy. The same custom template can create both.

Separating reinvested dividends from new money

There is no built-in way to separate purchases funded by dividend income from those funded by new money. The workaround is tags: tag the Buy transactions funded by your own transfers (Funding/Own money), or tag the ones made with reinvested dividends (Funding/Reinvested) — whichever set is smaller — then filter on that tag to total your invested principal excluding reinvestment.

Where automatic reinvestment is enabled, Capitally creates those buys for you, so tag them in bulk from the transactions table rather than one at a time.

Disabling automatic dividends

While Capitally's automatic dividend handling is a great feature, you might want to track dividends manually or simply not include them in your records. No problem! You can disable disable them for an Asset, an Account, or a specific Asset & Account pair:

1. Edit the Asset or Account you want to change.
2. Click on the "Positions" tab.
3. Find the "Automatic dividend handling" option.
4. Choose "Exclude Dividends" from the dropdown menu.

Upcoming and estimated dividends

Capitally doesn't just track your past dividends - it also helps you look into the future. Any future income will be reflected in all metrics, charts and displayed on transaction lists.

To see future dividends, check the widget on the dashboard, or simply select a future date range. For example:

• +1y (next year)
• -1y +1y (from a year ago to a year from now)
• max +1y (all history plus next year)
• 2023 2025 (specific year range)

Dividend statuses

Capitally uses the following statuses for dividends:

• Confirmed: Paid out and you've confirmed receiving it
• Unconfirmed: Paid out, but not yet confirmed by you
• Upcoming: Executed and will be paid out soon
• Declared: Officially announced future dividend
• Estimated: Capitally's prediction based on historical data

How future income is estimated?

Capitally uses past income events to estimate future ones. This includes both your project history and market history.

What Gets Estimated? Dividends and rent income. Dividends are estimated at a price-per-share level, while Rent is estimated at the total value level.

Capitally needs at least three income events of similar size to detect a pattern. It will keep estimating future events unless the last event is more than a month late. For example, if you stop receiving monthly rent, Capitally will wait two months after the last payment before it stops estimating future income from that property.

Handling dividend taxes

For more general information about tax handling, first check out the article about the Taxes support.

Capitally creates a Dividend Tax event based on two possible dates:

1. The Payment date of the dividend (if specified)
2. The Transaction date (if no payment date is given)

Tax withheld is not automatically calculated for dividends. You need to import dividends from a broker, or enter this information yourself:

1. Open the transaction details for the dividend
2. Find the "Tax Paid" field
3. Enter the amount of tax withheld by your broker or the company paying the dividend

Importing dividends and withholding tax

An import is treated as the source of truth. The "Tax paid on automatic income" percentage set on an Account, Asset, or position applies only to dividends Capitally generates, and never rewrites an imported transaction. So if your broker's export has no withholding-tax column, every imported dividend arrives with 0 in Tax paid, whatever percentage you configured.

Filling in missing withholding tax

Some brokers leave withholding tax out of the export — with Firstrade it is usually the description field being truncated. A tax preset can't cover for it either: presets compute tax due, what you owe, not tax withheld, what was already deducted. Two ways to close the gap:

• Set a fixed rate in the import preset on dividend rows. Fast for a bulk import, and it assumes every dividend is taxed at that one rate.
• Edit each dividend after import against your broker's own tax document. Slower, and exact.

To fix a single dividend: open the transaction, check that the total dividend value holds the gross, pre-tax amount, then enter the withheld amount in Tax paid / withheld — for example gross × 19% for a Spanish broker. Keep the total gross in every case. The tax field is what reduces the net income shown, so entering a net total double-counts the tax.

Corrections and restatements

Brokers restate withheld tax after the fact, and the correction usually arrives as its own row:

• Degiro sends corrections as extra dividend transactions with a value of 0 carrying only the tax adjustment. Totals come out right once they are applied, but a correction can be dated apart from the original dividend, which may move it into another tax year — check the dates against your statement before you file.
• IBKR restates tax on REITs, BDCs and closed-end funds, typically in January. If Capitally reports the original dividend as missing, either merge the files keeping the headers from all three tables, or add an Other row per correction, or add one collective Other tax-correction row on any asset dated inside the relevant tax year.

Re-importing to refresh dividend values

To overwrite dividends you have already imported — after a restatement, or once an import preset has been corrected — import the file again, sort by the Status column, select the rows marked Duplicate with the group-header checkbox, and switch them to Update. That replaces the existing values instead of skipping the rows.

If a broker's export consistently mis-maps its tax columns, send us a sample file and the import preset can be updated.

Where dividend cash goes

With cash tracking enabled, a dividend credits the cash position of the account that received it, like any other transaction that brings cash in. Without cash tracking, the payout still counts as income, but no cash is added — and since portfolio value is the sum of the market value of your holdings, the total won't move until that cash is recorded somewhere.

Two ways to record it if you don't run full cash tracking:

• Update the Account Balance periodically to reflect your current cash position. Simplest, and accurate as of each update.
• Add a Transfer transaction per payout, when you want each cashflow in the record.

The arithmetic works out either way: when you later spend that cash on shares, the cash balance falls and the holding's value rises, so the total stays right.

Dividends paid into a different account

If an asset sits in Account A but its dividends land in Account B — a broker paying into a linked bank account, say — there are two ways to model it:

1. If Account A never holds cash, edit Account A, open the Positions tab, and set it to use a single account for cash pointing at Account B. Every cash flow from Account A, dividends included, then routes through Account B.
2. Add a Convert/Move transaction after each payout to move the cash from A to B. More work per dividend, and it records each movement explicitly.

Analyzing investment income

The Income tab gathers the metrics, charts and transactions for everything Capitally counts as income. Two questions come up most: how much income your invested capital is producing, which is Yield on Cost, and which holdings that income actually comes from.

Yield, Yield on Cost and Income Yield each use a different base and a different window, which is why they rarely agree. Income: Yield, Yield on Cost and Income Yield sets the three side by side and lists what to check when one of them looks wrong.

Yield on Cost

Yield on Cost measures income against what the position cost you, not against its current price. Which number you get depends on the mode set in Return calculation options:

• Over Period computes Yield on Cost for the date range on screen. Set the period to Max and you get the cumulative dividend return as a percentage of average cost — the figure usually called Dividend ROI: total dividends received divided by invested capital.
• Auto shows the same value annualized, expressed as a rate per year whatever period is selected.

The cost base is Average Principal, the time-weighted average of the capital actually deployed, rather than the total amount you ever invested. That matters for a position built up in instalments: capital that only started working last month shouldn't be weighted like capital that has been working for ten years. Average Principal is defined in the portfolio metrics reference.

Which holdings produce what share of your income

1. Turn on the With Income filter, so only income-paying positions are included.
2. Set the period. A full year such as 2025 also includes forecast dividends through to year end.
3. Enable chart editing.
4. Select Investment Income as the metric.
5. Choose the Heatmap chart: rectangle size is average invested principal, colour is the metric.
6. Click the # button at the top right of the chart to switch to percentage mode — the same button that hides actual amounts when you share a view. Each rectangle now reads as that instrument's share of total dividends for the period.
7. Save the chart preset, and bookmark the view if you'll come back to it.

What it is for: dividend concentration. Two rectangles carrying most of the colour means an income stream that depends on two payers.

Comparing income across periods

There is no dedicated table or chart that puts income from several years or months side by side, and no per-asset dividend growth line. Until there is: stay on the income view and step the period selector with the +/-1 buttons to read each period in turn, then sort the Assets sub-tab by fixed income to see which holdings contribute most.

Dashboard includes two widgets summarizing the last year's yield and upcoming incomeIncome tab lets you explore all relevant metrics and chartsIncome Transactions let's you check specific dividends - both already paid out or estimated to be paid out in the futureX-Ray chart let's you directly compare income from investment types, markets, accounts, you name itCompare your whole portfolio returns to only those that bring income, by using "With Income" filter as a benchmark

Taxable Income Report let's you create a detailed statement to work with your accountant

Other types of income

Capitally recognizes and helps you track other income types than dividends as well. All of them behave the same within the system and everything that applies to dividends applies to other income types as well. Let's look at what else you can monitor:

What counts as Income

The Income metric counts Dividend, Rent and Interest transactions — regular income arriving on a roughly fixed schedule. The Other transaction type, including its Other Income subtype, is a separate category and does not contribute to the Income metric, even after you make it visible with the column toggle in the Income tab.

That is deliberate: one-off amounts would distort yield, cadence, and the forecasts built on them. Other cashflows still count towards your total return — see Calculating returns.

If you want a transaction such as a withholding-tax refund to count as income, change its transaction type to Dividend. If your broker's export consistently produces those refunds as Other Income, send us a sample file so the import preset can be corrected.

Real estate rental

If you're investing in real estate, you can track your rental income just like dividends. This feature allows you to:

• Log regular rental payments, along with fees and taxes paid
• Estimate future rental income based on past data

For comprehensive real estate tracking including expenses and mortgages, see Tracking Real Estate.

Interest coupons

For investments that pay interest, such as bonds or deposits you can track interest payments.

You can add Interest transactions manually, import them in bulk or setup Interest-based pricing to let Capitally generate them for you automatically.

Generated interest is created as a cashflow transaction and is not reinvested by default, so the asset's Balance and Market Value don't absorb it — a savings account tracked this way drifts further from its real balance the longer it runs. To compound it instead, edit the asset, open the Positions tab, and set Automatic dividend handling to Reinvest fractional shares. That setting governs interest as well as dividends, despite the name.