Calculate Estimated Income (8 merged votes)
PeterC
Member ✭✭
The Security Detail window automatically captures every stock's dividend. But if we want Estimated Income to appear on the Investments/Portfolio screen, we have to laboriously enter the dividend from the Security Detail into Edit Security Details/Other Info. Why is this function not automated in Quicken? Could y'all please just do it?
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Comments
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Why don't you provide the option to add a column on the investing pages which multiplies the dividend per share times the number of shares. This would provide a good estimate of the expected annual dividend income to be derived from the portfolio.
You have an Estimated Income column ... but it's all zeros.0 -
If you haven't already, I suggest you set the Est. income on the Additional Security Information window (right-click on a security, select Edit and Other Info).2
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Thanks for the idea but I don't want to manually add this info on all my stocks . Plus then it would not be kept up to date as the dividends change. Quicken should do that. To do it manually it's not Quick.3
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I agree with Mike Yacenda on this point. Quicken is already downloading quotes and investment information every time users do a "One Step Update." It is really a simple, yet needed fix/enhancement to have the "Est. Income" automatically updated by the Quicken software vs requiring users to manually enter this information for securities & ETF's with ticker symbols. "Est. Income" = Annual Dividend payout/share, which Quicken is already downloading for each security with a ticker symbol. Manual user input ensures that the data will be out of date as soon as the security information changes. Since Quicken is updating this data anyway with every One Step Update, it is a simple programming adjustment to update the "Est. Income" field on the security detail record for each security downloaded. It would ensure that the "Estimated Income" column would automatically be updated with the latest security information whenever users click on the "Investing" tab in Quicken. I live in Silicon Valley and have extensive programming experience, which is why I understand how simple this fix would be for Quicken to implement.
Can this enhancement please be added to the next update from Quicken?3 -
Hello @Mike Yacenda & @glenn.hout,
Thank you for bringing this to the attention of the Community!
I went ahead and turned this discussion into an Idea thread so that other users are able to vote on it. Our developer's review Idea threads to get an idea of what people would like Quicken to offer.
Be sure to add your vote by clicking on the gray triangle right above the current vote count, located in the blue box at the beginning of this thread:
Thank you,
Quicken Natalie
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This has been requested before. One issue is that some securities have varying income throughout the year so it is hard to estimate accurately. Individual stocks usually declare their dividend once per year and pay the same amount for the next 4 quarters, but sometimes mutual funds have a larger dividend in December than the rest of the year. So what should the estimate be - 4x the last payment for quarterly dividends, the total of the last year's payments, or something else?
The data from Quicken's quote provider is last payment * payments per year I think. [edit 2/1/22 It appears that the quote provider is using the total dividend payments in the last 12 months]
Also the quote provider's data is spotty and only covers securities with valid tickers.
I prefer to set it myself, but I would like the setting to allow more decimal places than currently. It is currently 2 places, so for money market funds with a share price of $1.00, you have to pick between 0%, 1%, or 2%. [edit 2/1/22 - 4 decimal places are now allowed Thanks, Quicken!]QWin Premier subscription0 -
For further discussion of this issue, see here
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7430317/dividend-annual-income
I have recently started using @mshiggins' approach of using Reminders for dividend income in taxable accounts, which has the advantage of feeding directly to the Tax Planner. This would not work for active traders however.QWin Premier subscription0 -
Hi Quicken-Natalie & Jim Harman,
You both bring up good points. Estimated Income = Annual Dividend Income + Annual Interest Income + Annual Short Term Cap Gains Dist + Annual Long Term Cap Gains Dist. It isn't the same as Annual Dividend Income, and is a much more complex calculation and needs to be done manually as you point out. However, if Quicken were to add a column on the "Investing Portfolio" tab when users select "Customize Current View", which included an "Available Column" titled "Dividend Income," it would at least provide a simple summary of estimated income annually from stock/ETF dividends. Agreed that the dividend data can change over time, but Quicken will continuously update that information with One Step Update more reliably than my going in and doing manual updates when I remember to check. And remember, Estimated Income is not the same thing as Dividend Income; there's really no other place to see Annual Dividend Income unless Quicken calculates it for you automatically for securities/ETF's that have tickers.
Could we please add "Dividend Income" as an additional selectable column that is automatically calculated by Quicken within the Investing Portfolio view?1 -
Some people (myself included) do not consider capital gains distributions to be income, even though they are taxable. That's another reason to let people decide for themselves how they want to calculate estimated income.
Note that there is already an "Income" column in the portfolio views that shows the income you have received since the start date set in the Portfolio Preferences. It might be helpful if there were 12-mo and YTD versions of this. The Dividend Yield column is also useful when the data is available.
You can also use the Investment Income report to see historical income.QWin Premier subscription1 -
It is hard for us users to answer "why" questions, but note that many securities, especially mutual funds, do not pay consistent dividends throughout the year. This makes it difficult to estimate what the annual income will be: should it be a multiple of the most recent dividend, the same as the last 12 months' total dividends, or what?QWin Premier subscription-1
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Jim, the why isn't really the point, and I'm asking for the improvement only with regard to individual securities whose dividend is a)known and b) already captured in Quicken.3
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Agreed, the data is there to calculate a pretty good estimate. Dividend yield is reported in a Portfolio view column for most mutual funds and could be used to calculate an annual Estimated Income.0
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Do people at Q read our questions?0
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This request has risen periodically for more than a decade. You could post it as a suggestion, I've been surprised before by Quicken actions.
https://community.quicken.com/categories/investments-(windows)
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See this discussion for further info on this topic
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20021416#Comment_20021416
QWin Premier subscription0 -
I support the concept of this idea. The implementation will need to be fully thought out, though. Jim has cited some relevant issues. Is it a routine to translate downloaded data into the existing data field (Security Details / Other)? How would that relate to user entries? Can the user override? A new set of columns in a portfolio view? How does it apply to bonds that have a defined interest rate?
Put in enough thought and execute it correctly, it will be a helpful addition.2 -
The good folks at Quicken (really, really) need to include an an optional feature (i.e., 'Investing|Update') that enables a user to write the value (if not blank/empty) contained in 'Security Detail|Quote|Ann Div/Share' field to the 'Security Details|Other Info|Est. Income' field.
I currently use Quicken to manage my personal portfolio of 100+ securities and use the Estimated Income for each security to derive/report on an estimate of the cash flow potential over the next 12 months. Most of my securities announce (and pay) dividends on a monthly basis, which means that I go through each security in Quicken every month to compare the current (dynamically updated) value contained in the 'Ann Div/Share' field to what's in the static 'Est. Income' field, and if they're not the same, then key-in the new dividend amount in the 'Est. Income' field. Not particularly challenging, but definitely time consuming and a real PITA.1 -
An option for each security to use the downloaded dividend data or allow the user to enter it manually would be a nice enhancement. There is already a similar option to use the downloaded asset class information or set it manually.QWin Premier subscription0
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I just wanted to add my request here. I have done what was suggested.
1. go to edit the security
2. in other options added the annual dividend amount and saved.
then when I look in investing area, it shows the annual estimated dividend income. However, I also see the column for the annual dividends. Why can't the quicken programmers just use the shares column and multiply buy the annual dividend column and put the total in the annual income column? This way it would be automatic. I can't add the dividend amount for each security as I have hundreds of them in quicken. As I have seen others say this should be a very easy update for the programmers. Please add this especially since you have started charging a subscription feee.0 -
Just a couple of points you may have overlooked:runpeterk said:I just wanted to add my request here. I have done what was suggested.
1. go to edit the security
2. in other options added the annual dividend amount and saved.
then when I look in investing area, it shows the annual estimated dividend income. However, I also see the column for the annual dividends. Why can't the quicken programmers just use the shares column and multiply buy the annual dividend column and put the total in the annual income column? This way it would be automatic. I can't add the dividend amount for each security as I have hundreds of them in quicken. As I have seen others say this should be a very easy update for the programmers. Please add this especially since you have started charging a subscription feee.- The estimated income may include income from interest, dividends, and distributions.
- The third party quote service provider does not provide an annual dividend for all securities with dividends.
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> @Sherlock said:
> Just a couple of points you may have overlooked:* The estimated income may include income from interest, dividends, and distributions.
> * The third party quote service provider does not provide an annual dividend for all securities with dividends.
While that is true, there are several ways to make this useful. I think most of us are talking about stocks, because dividends are tough to call for most mutual funds. REITs typically pay 1 dividend per quarter and how the income is divided comes out in the 1099. Same with BDCs, although some do it with a K1 which has way too many moving parts for this conversation. The bottom line, at least in my case, is at least give me a rolling 12 month estimate based on current dividend. It's useful from a decision making standpoint. Yes, I use Quicken to tell me most of what my actual performance is, but also I use it as a decision making tool.
If you know you're not going to be accurate on mutual funds or similar instruments with variable dividends & unpredictable frequencies, just create a custom view grouped by security type. Then you'll have projected income by stocks/ETFs, and your more problematic types will be segregated by mutual funds and other. it's an estimate, so stocks inclined toward annual raises or ETFs that are dependent on their holdings will vary. Dividend repurchases will incrementally increase income.
In my case I have some managed accounts with so many equities there's almost no way to even keep track of them, so summary data like "annual dividend x # of shares" is at least one metric I can summarize on. What I have now is worse than useless. I still have "estimated income" included in some views just because I don't want to miss it if it ever gets fixed.
Consider - most stocks in my portfolio have a known dividend and a zero in estimated income. Here's a few that don't (examples of positions with no purchases or sales in the last 8 quarters except for dividend re-investments):
AAPL - estimated income (annual div x # of shares) is over estimated by 2.13x actual
SO - estimated income is 25% too low
SBUX - 41% too low
There's no way to make any sense of this craziness, and the the utility of the feature is zero.0 -
There are numerous shortfalls in the current version of Quicken subscription model that sub optimize my ability to use it as a comprehensive tool and eliminate spreadsheets. The lack of an Estimated Income calculation and the inability to accurately manage options trading are among the most important to me. :/0
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After reading all this
1) Quick should calculate it even if it is wrong in some edge cases - it is called "estimated" for that reason
2) Alternatively perhaps a general formula function would suffice where users could enter their own formula from existing columns.0 -
The vote counter for the Idea thread doesn't seem to be working. It doesn't appear to be recording my attempt to vote in support.0
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Click on the triangle below the vote count in the first post in this discussion to register your vote.QWin Premier subscription0
