In Type reinvest dividend the field total value is inaccessible how do I access it?

Question

Peter Lafferty · Answer

Thanks for the help. I was not understanding it correctly. I now see how it works. I recently converted from Windows to Mac, things are a little different, I am getting better in the new environment.

Quicken Eli · Answer

There may be some confusion here, either in Peter's question, or in Jon's response, on the meaning of "total value".  So, this "clarification" may either clear up some confusion or make it worse!

The clarification is that a Reinvest transaction, by its very nature does not involve any cash, so the "total value" is always zero.  There is no need (or ability) to set the total to anything other then zero.

Another way to look at a Reinvest is that it is a "shorthand" for two transactions.  One of them is a Dividend transaction for say $100.  The second transaction is a Buy for some number of shares at a given price plus (optionally) a commission.  The Buy (if it actually existed as a separate transaction) would also end as a total of (minus) $100.  Internally, this is exactly how Quicken treats the Reinvest transaction.

Jon · Answer

You don't. You enter the the price per share that you paid when the dividend was reinvested and the number of shares purchased, and Quicken will calculate the total value (you might have to click the pencil next to the price per share window to be able to edit that). That's how reinvested dividends show up in my retirement accounts. It's basically the same as a regular purchase.

If the total value is wrong, then either the number of shares is off or the purchase price is off. Check your statement to see how many shares you actually purchased and make sure Quicken has the correct value for that, then modify the price as needed to get the total value of the transaction to be correct.