Managing difference between transaction and value dates

[tjhughes72]

Hi again Mark,

I have a share (GlaxoSmithKline - GSK) where my broker set me up on a strange dividend reinvestment plan. I am trying to record a transaction in 2009, where I had 3,000 GSK shares. On 29 April 2009 I got a call payment - i.e. money taken out of my bank account - to buy 38 GSK shares. However these don't show up in value until 9 July 2009.

I entered a transaction against my default cash account saying I bought 38 GSK shares at £X. This keeps my bank statements all nice and reconciled.

Unfortunately I'm having trouble reconciling my portfolio, especially for the Q2 end (30 June 2009). My portfolio summary shows the correct cash balance but I'm shown as owning 3,038 GSK shares whereas actually I should only have 3,000 (I don't think I won the other 38 until 9 July 2009).

Can you help? Are there any work-arounds? I can think of some strange "transfer out" or creating a suspense account / portfolio somewhere to store and track these but is there a neater way?

Kind regards,

Tom.

[Mark]

Hi Tom,

One idea would be to record a purchase of some option for GSK. It would be a separate investment from your GSK investment. You can buy the appropriate value of this GSK option, so your cash is correct. You can then price this GSK option according to whatever they are worth. If your broker doesn't show anything you owned for this payment, then you still wouldn't reconcile. I guess you could mark this option to be ignored when reconciling. Another option would be to record the payment as a negative distribution, and then on the date you get the shares, record a transfer in of these shares.

[tjhughes72]

Thank a lot Mark!

Kind regards,

Tom.