Fidelity Mutual Fund with more than 1 payout type same day and Quicken's reinvested dividends?
My use case: A Fidelity mutual fund paid out twice on the same date in December 2024, one payout was a regular dividend, the second payout was a long term capital gain. I am setup to reinvest all these payouts.
Fidelity, rightly or wrongly, took the sum of both payouts and recorded one reinvestment transaction. Fidelity shows three lines of activity, 1) A Dividend payout, 2) A LTcapGain payout, and 3) Shares purchase as a reinvestment using the sum of both payouts.
In Quicken, the only way (that I can see) to record a dividend reinvestment is via the “Inc – Income (Div, Int, etc.)” entry box.
However, using that data entry box, I have to manually (outside of Quicken) calculate the shares purchased with the Long Term gain and the shares purchased by the regular dividend, because the “Inc – Income (Div, Int, etc.)” forces entry of shares for each payout type. It does not allow nor does it match Fidelity’s approach of one reinvestment transaction for multiple payout transactions. The math was easy (but annoying that I have to do it). The process is what I’m questioning here.
When Quicken downloaded the Fidelity transactions there was no match, not even a possibility to force a manual match like with downloaded credit card or bank transactions.
Is this intended behavior, or am I missing something? Will it always work this way?
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Hello @Retired Coal Miner,
Thank you for sharing your experience. You mentioned how the transaction displays on the Fidelity side, but how is it coming into your Quicken? It sounded like you were having to manually enter at least part of it, and that the way it downloads is far enough off that you're not even able to force it to manually match.
I look forward to your reply!
Quicken Kristina
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It is coming into Quicken the same way it shows on Fidelity's website, three transactions 1) A Dividend payout, 2) A LTcapGain payout, and 3) Shares purchased as a reinvestment using the sum of both payouts.
In Quicken, after manually entering the payouts and the reinvestment via the “Inc – Income (Div, Int, etc.)” entry box (I don't see any other way to make reinvestment entries) I get two lines not three like Fidelity shows, 1) a ReinvDiv, which shows the dividend payout and the reinvestment, 2) a ReinvLg, which shows the long term gain payout and the reinvestment of same.
There was no match, not even possible to force a manual match between the three Fidelity transactions and the two Quicken transactions. This is way I posted to ask if this intended behavior, or am I missing something?
I'm not sure how it would work if I did not make the manual entries before a download. The only choices would be to accept the downloaded Fidelity entries or delete them, so maybe this is the only way to make/force Quicken entries to match Fidelity entries.
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You can do it the way you did as two Reinvestment transactions which will create two lots acquired by reinvestment on that date, OR
You can do it as three transactions (Dividend Income, LTCG income, Buy Shares) which will create one lot acquired on that date.
The net effect is identical in terms of shares acquired, cost of those shares, and reportable income.
It is no big deal to 'not accept' or delete the downloaded Fidelity transactions.
It is no big deal to accept the Fidelity transactions and delete you prior manual entries.
Is this intended behavior? Yes, I guess. These are two ways to record the same event and the program generally does not intend to consider one preferable over the other such that it would replace one method with another.
I will add that there is one other (I consider minor) difference between the two. Quicken considers buying shares as increasing the Amount Invested in the security. Acquiring shares by reinvestment increase a different measure, Amount Reinvested. The Amount Invested flows into other return calculations that Amount reinvested does not. I would suggest over the years, one should be consistent in using one approach or the other.
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^ Thanks this is very useful to know.
Quicken enforces a rule, which was confusing when this happened, (in an 'I never questioned this before' way): Only allow reinvestments to be recorded that come from a payout of dividends or interest or short, medium or long-term capital gains. Which makes sense, that's how it works with the Fidelities of the world.
All the other payouts of dividends I've ever encountered were 1:1, one payout type on reinvested in one day. When the payouts of two different types came through on one day, and then when Fidelity summed the two payouts and made it be one reinvestment transaction, make me question how I've bene doing it in the past. In hindsight I suspect this will be infrequent, once-a-year cap gains were paid out on the same day as monthly dividends.
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