Here’s How to Enter Basic Dividend Payment Information into an Excel Spreadsheet.

Well, I sure got a lot of feedback from readers about the hassle of manually tracking dividend payments and other information about income investments.

It appears I’m NOT the only one who finds the process to be one big headache!

Many people told me that it’s such a hassle they don’t even bother.

Others confessed that they don’t know how to use Excel or other spreadsheets very well.

As a result, I thought I’d run through a few basic operations for you so you can at least track dividend payments, if you’d like.

The most BASIC way to do this is to simply list all of the dividend payments you receive for a quarter in a column going down.

It looks like this:

 

I simply enter the total dollar amount of dividends I get for each stock or investment as I get them, along with the date.  I dedicated three Excel columns to do this and simply go down the page, listing them one after the other.

I dedicate the first three columns to the Q1… then do the same thing in the next-three columns to the right for Q2… then three more columns for Q3… and one more set of three for Q4.

The last step is to simply add up all of the dividend payments by quarter… which I put in a final column at the far right.  It looks like this:

Now, as you can see, this tells me how much dividend income I took in for each quarter – as well as showing the increase or decrease from one quarter to the next.

This is the most basic information – total income and quarterly increase.

But notice what is NOT included here:

1. There is NO information about how many shares there are for each stock…
2. There is NO information about what the cost basis is for each stock…
3. NO information on the total performance of the stock when you factor in the dividends…
4. NO information about how the dividend payments affect the overall cost basis… and so on.

To get those numbers involves all sorts of calculations that I don’t include on this simple Excel spreadsheet.

I have to dig this information out from current and old brokerage statements, enter these numbers by hand into Excel, and then add some formulas and calculations to figure how some of the numbers.

Let me tell you:  it ain’t easy!

And I’m a trained mathematician.  And I’ve been doing this for a long, long time.

I won’t even get into how much time it takes to track other information down on the Internet… such as historical dividend payment information.

So, you can maybe understand why I’ve dreamed for years about a SIMPLER, easier way to do all this.

For a long time, I’ve fantasized about creating an Excel spreadsheet that could somehow download up-to-the-minute information on dividends form the Internet… and then instantly update all the positions for my current holdings… and then ALSO project how this will do in the future.

The problem is, Excel is NOT the best program for this.  It’s an accounting tool, not a tool for analysis.

The IDEAL would be a non-Excel program that downloaded all the data… made all of the calculations… but presented everything in simple, attractive graphs so you could instantly see what it all means for your portfolio.

I also want a program that lets me try out various scenarios – a FORECASTING tool that allows me to test out different dividend investing strategies.

For example, if I want to figure out what shifting $5,000 from one dividend stock to another will do to my monthly income six months from now… that might take me an hour or more to make all the calculations by hand.

As you know, I’ve long thought that… there must be a better way!

There are Excel programs out there with all of the calculations and formulas pre-added… but you still have to add the information by hand.

And it’s STILL just an Excel spreadsheet.

And none of the existing programs let you do forecasting or even calculate adjusted cost basis.

That’s why I’d like to ask my readers, you, what YOU do to track your dividends.

If you don’t mind, please shoot me an email and briefly describe how you go about tracking your dividend payments.

Do you use an Excel spreadsheet?

Do you enter your payments in Quicken or some other piece of PC software?

Do you simply keep a log book and write down your payments that way?

Whatever you do, please let me know what it is.

I’ll share the results of this informal survey with my readers and maybe together we’ll gain some valuable insights.

Let me thank you in advance.

Back to main dividend tracking and forecasting blog page.

 

 

 

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