Project Annual Income and Annual Dividend Rate

[erlconsult]

I want to be able to show projected annual income. Since there isn't a way to automate entry of dividend info I wanted to streamline maintaining the info by only entering the projected annual dividend rate. I set up a custom field and entered the info, only to find that while the report will calculate projected annual income based on my custom field, the column does not get totaled. The formula I entered is AnnualDividend * End_Shares. Annual Dividend is the custom field I set up to hold the projected annual dividend rate. Upon researching why the column does not get totaled, I found that because End_shares is not a value field, I don't get totals.

1. It would be more flexible to add the capability of designating which user-defined custom reports fields are to be totaled. For example, just because it doesn't make sense to total End_Shares does not mean it does not make sense to total calculations which use the field. It is the ending result that matters. I hope that you will consider this for a future enhancement

2. I know that FM has a projected annual income field which calculates the income based on the entries in the income tab, but I do not want to maintain the information for each payment during the year. This is too labor intensive and I would prefer to maintain only one figure. As a work around, I guess I can ignore the individual payments and enter only one payment and use the indicated annual dividend rate in the payment per share. In this case what date would you suggest I use or does it matter?

3. I would like the annual income rate that the projected annual income is based upon to appear on the report. Is there a way to include the "next income rate" ?

4. It would be helpful to have the capability of having a separate field for the projected annual dividend rate rather than relying on summing the scheduled payments. The total may not always be accurate.

Thanks,
Eddy

[Mark]

Hi Eddy,

Thanks for the feedback.

1) You can accomplish what you're describing, by changing your equation to:

AnnualDivRate * End_Value / 100

where "AnnualDivRate" is a custom investment property set to a "number" and "Weighted Average" for the combination method.

2) You can use this method, and just pick any date you want. It doesn't matter, as the "projected annual income" custom report field always looks for exactly 1 year after ending report date, so it doesn't matter when in the year it is paid.

3) The "projected annual income" field isn't a "rate", but a value. You can get the next scheduled payment date using "Next income date" and the next scheduled payment amount with "Next income value".

4) Okay. For now, you can define your own as a custom investment property as described in #1 above.

[erlconsult]

Mark,
Thanks for the quick response.
please see my comments in blue below.

1) You can accomplish what you're describing, by changing your equation to:

AnnualDivRate * End_Value / 100

where "AnnualDivRate" is a custom investment property set to a "number" and "Weighted Average" for the combination method.

Since the dividend rate is based on the number of shares, not the market value, this formula does not work to get projected income.

2) You can use this method, and just pick any date you want. It doesn't matter, as the "projected annual income" custom report field always looks for exactly 1 year after ending report date, so it doesn't matter when in the year it is paid.


3) The "projected annual income" field isn't a "rate", but a value. You can get the next scheduled payment date using "Next income date" and the next scheduled payment amount with "Next income value".

I want to see both the projected annual income and the annual dividend rate upon which it is based. Since I would be entering only one payment per year, the projected annual income would be based on the "amount per share"(effectively the annual dividend rate) I entered. I would like this number to appear on the report. It helps the verification process to be able to see the dividend rate used since that's what was actually entered. In Yahoo Finance, the figure I am using is called the "Forward Annual Dividend Rate" and appears on the Key Statistics Page under Dividends and Splits on the lower right hand side of the page.

4) Okay. For now, you can define your own as a custom investment property as described in #1 above.

#1 does not meet my needs.

[Mark]

Hi erlconsult,

Sorry about the confusion on #1. When I heard "dividend rate", I was thinking of a "dividend yield", and not a per-share dividend amount. That Yahoo site has both:

Forward Annual Dividend Rate
Forward Annual Dividend Yield

If you use the second one in that "AnnualDivRate" custom investment property, that would be what I had intended. If you want to enter the number shown as "Forward Annual Dividend Rate" then you can't use a custom investment property to get a portfolio level number. In this case I'd suggest instead to just use the "Income" tab, and enter this value in there, as that is taking a dividend per share number.

To get both the projected annual income and the div per share number it is based on you would need to define a new field with the equation:

Projected_annualincome/End_shares

The built-in field "Projected annual income" will give you the projected annual income, and this equation will give you the total annual dividend per share amount upon which it is based.