Margin interest

[moonlighter]

I don't see any simple way to record margin interest paid. The only way I can do it is to record it as a distribution transaction (which already doesn't make sense) in my default cash account and then I need to mark it as reinvested (again, not making much sense) and then need to enter shares and price?

Call me crazy but I think I should be able to create a transaction record called "margin interest," enter the amount of margin interest paid and then click OK.

Thanks.

[Mark]

HI moonlighter,

Thanks for the feedback. To record a margin interest payment you would record this as a negative distribution of type "interest". You are paying the interest, not receiving it, so it is negative. Since you are using up shares of cash out of your account to pay for this interest, you need to mark it as reinvested, and the shares would equal the value, and the price is 1. If you didn't mark it as reinvested (distributed), it would be as if you mailed in a check to pay the interest.

I understand your point that this may not be as obvious as a dedicated "margin interest" command. All of the distributions work off the same generic model, so as to be flexible. We can consider adding some specific commands that would record it the same way, but maybe in a simpler manner.

[moonlighter]

I did record the margin interest as a distribution of type "Interest Income Reinvestment" like you said and it works the way I want. The margin interest is correctly reflected in the Value column and OOP Historical Gain. I just add a Memo for the record indicating that it's a margin interest payment. So it's true the software handles the transaction sufficiently.

Thanks.