Stocks, Shares and Dividend Management

Introduction

The terms Stocks and Shares generally mean the same thing but depending on how we use these terms, could mean something different. Here we refer to Stocks as companies, and Shares as units of value within the company. Generally we would obtain Stocks via a Stock Broker and purchase or sell shares in the company.

Initialising Stocks and Shares is initially a two stage process.

1. First we create the Stock Entry and the associated Share Account.
   
   
2. We add the initial Shares information to our Share Account.
   
   

Any subsequent transactions involving Share movements is accessed via the company in the Stock Portfolio view.

Any transaction associated with our normal accounts is done via the Account View using the associated Shares Account.

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Creating a Stock Portfolio for our Stocks

In order to use Stocks and Shares in MMEX, we need to create an account of
type: Investment

The name for this account would generally be the name of the Stock Broker.
In our example we have selected the stock broker being called: Yahoo Finance.

This account would appear in the navigation tree under the heading Stock Portfolios.
When we expand the Stock Portfolios branch in the navigation tree, we would see our newly created Stock Portfolio account.

Selecting our new account Yahoo Finance opens the view: Stock Portfolio: Yahoo Finance.
In this view we can now add the stocks that we own.  

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Adding Stocks to our Stock Portfolio

We refer to Stocks as the companies that we have purchased shares.

Let us say that we purchase shares in two companies from out stock broker Yahoo Finance,
we would create new entries in the stock portfolio view for our companies.

As an initial entry for each company we would supply the following:

1. Company Name
   Example: Alpha Corporation
   This will also allow us to create a Share Account for this company of the same name.
   
   
2. Stock Symbol
   Example: APC.AX
   [ APC ] being the Stock Exchange code,   [ .AX ] being the Stock Exchange to obtain current share value information
   
   
3. Share Number being the initial number of shares
   
   
4. Share Price
   This is the cost per share
   
   
5. Commission
   This is generally the remaining value for incomplete shares
   Example: Purchase of $1000.00 worth of shares at $2.35 per share, gives us 425 shares and $1.25 as commission.

Note:
The fields Date, Share Number, Share Price and Commission are duplicated for each share transaction that we enter.
The Date in the Stock Portfolio view becomes obsolete, and it is recommended that this field is hidden.

New Stock Investment example

On saving this entry, the Share Account and Share Linkage can be set up. Subsequent use of this dialog allows us to update the share price for this stock. When additional shares have been purchased, this price will affect all shares. Important: Save before close to keep any changes

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Adding Initial Shares to our Stock

Now that we have created the initial Stock entry, we need to Add a Transaction to our Stock to create the initial Shares entry. The initial share information is transferred to our new share transaction.

Here we would add extra information similar to a normal transaction.

1. Account
   This would be the associated Share Account created when the Stock was initially created.
   If this was not done, any other account can be used for this transaction.
   In order to keep track of transactions, it is recommended that a Share Account is created.
    
2. Type - Deposit or Withdrawal - Transfer
   Withdrawal from the share account represents a deposit to the actual shares
   Deposit from the share account represents a withdrawal to the actual shares
   
   
3. Transfer
   All Share transactions are in effect transfers to and from actual share investments.
   Depending on the transaction this is either a purchase or sale of shares.
   If the transaction is required to be accounted as an expense or as income, we would then remove the transfer selection.
    

Addition of Shares to our transaction

Adding Subsequent Share Entries to our Stock

Purchase or sale of shares is achieved by accessing the stock entry in the Stock Portfolio view and adding new transaction.

Here we need to add the share information and control the purchase or sale via the transaction section of the share entry:

• Share Purchase
  Transaction type is Withdrawal with respect to normal transactions.
   
• Share Sale
  Transaction type is Deposit with respect to normal transactions.

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Stock Portfolio Account

Our Stock Portfolio Account now displays a summary of the Stocks we have.

1. The stock broker name is used to define the Stock Investment name.
2. The companies we buy shares from become the share name.
3. Shares are generally associated with a Share Account having the same name as the company name.
4. The Shares Accounts heading can be seen by using the menu item: View ---> Display Share Accounts

Example:
Companies: Alpha Corp and Beta Corp maintain their accounts with Yahoo Finance.
Here we have hidden various headings as these become meaningless in this view.

Note:
Initial share price is not listed in this view.
This is because the share price becomes meaningless in a summary view as each purchase will generally have a different share price.

Stock Portfolio view containing our new Stocks

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Stock Transaction List View

When we have added shares to our account we can see the associated share transactions using the View Transactions

Stock list from Portfolio view for our stock

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Share Accounts in MMEX

A Share account contain the transactions that are associated with this company stock.

Initially we would set aside money for investment in Stocks and Shares. This is achieved by transferring money from our general accounts to a Share account.

As shares are purchased and dividends received, we can now keep track of our investment over time.

In a transactions, we can also use the company name as a Payee.
It is also advisable to create categories of:

1. Share: Purchase
2. Share: Dividend
3. Share: Sale

Account View for the Share Account: Alpha Corp

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Adding Dividends to our Shares.

Accessing our share account, we can add ordinary transactions to our shares account.

1. A share dividend transaction becomes a normal transaction.
2. The same rules for Income and Expense apply to share accounts when a transaction is created in the Account View.
3. Actual commissions paid to a stock broker should also be recorded as a separate transaction.

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