If you're looking for a way to record share dividend receipts, this article might be for you.

Hi all!  (Edit 17/01/2025)

There has been recent interest in this information about share dividends and I am pleased to say that thanks to the help of our wonderful Accountant community, this has now been updated with current screenshots and information 🎉

This article describes a few ways to record the receipt of dividends from a share portfolio. There are a number of ways to record these payments, and the options provided may not be suitable for your needs.

This article is provided for guidance only, and might not be suitable for your business requirements. For example, it's suited to Australian businesses and doesn't cover the payout of dividends. If you need clarification or additional information, check with your accounting advisor or post your question below.

Option 1 - Recording cash dividend only

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• Create an Income Account for receipt of your dividends. You may choose to set it up as an Income (4-xxxx) or Other Income (8-xxxx) account. See our example below.
  
  
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• Enter the receipt of your dividends through Receive Money, allocating the amount to your Dividends account. See our example below.
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Option 2 - Recording cash dividend & imputation credits

 This method deals with the situation where you want the imputation credit to affect your financial records. When reporting amounts for Pay As You Go Instalments (field T1 on the Business Activity Statement), the amount of the Dividend Imputation Credit is not normally included for calculation, although it is usually included for income tax purposes.

 Note: There are exceptions to this treatment. Please seek advice from your accountant or the Australian Taxation Office if you have any queries.

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• Setup the following accounts:
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• Franked Dividends (Income)
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• Dividend Imputation Credit (Income)
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• Unfranked Dividends (Income)
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• Dividend Imputation Credits (Asset)
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• Assuming a cash dividend of $100.00 was received with $50 franked, $50 unfranked and an imputation credit of $28.12, the deposit would appear as shown below.
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• The credit of $28.12 is credited to the asset account to be offset against future tax liabilities.
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Accounting for new shares purchased as part of a Dividend Reinvestment Plan

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1. Enter the receipt of your dividends through Receive Money, allocating the amount to your Dividends account then on 2^nd line enter asset shares at cost to add shares for reinvestment. Recommend to add number of shares and company
\n

 See our example below.

Hi all!  (Edit 17/01/2025)

There has been recent interest in this information about share dividends and I am pleased to say that thanks to the help of our wonderful Accountant community, this has now been updated with current screenshots and information 🎉

This article describes a few ways to record the receipt of dividends from a share portfolio. There are a number of ways to record these payments, and the options provided may not be suitable for your needs.

This article is provided for guidance only, and might not be suitable for your business requirements. For example, it's suited to Australian businesses and doesn't cover the payout of dividends. If you need clarification or additional information, check with your accounting advisor or post your question below.

Option 1 - Recording cash dividend only

\n
• Create an Income Account for receipt of your dividends. You may choose to set it up as an Income (4-xxxx) or Other Income (8-xxxx) account. See our example below.
  
  
\n

\n
• Enter the receipt of your dividends through Receive Money, allocating the amount to your Dividends account. See our example below.
\n

Option 2 - Recording cash dividend & imputation credits

 This method deals with the situation where you want the imputation credit to affect your financial records. When reporting amounts for Pay As You Go Instalments (field T1 on the Business Activity Statement), the amount of the Dividend Imputation Credit is not normally included for calculation, although it is usually included for income tax purposes.

 Note: There are exceptions to this treatment. Please seek advice from your accountant or the Australian Taxation Office if you have any queries.

\n
• Setup the following accounts:
\n

\n
\n
• Franked Dividends (Income)
\n
• Dividend Imputation Credit (Income)
\n
• Unfranked Dividends (Income)
\n
• Dividend Imputation Credits (Asset)
\n
\n

\n
• Assuming a cash dividend of $100.00 was received with $50 franked, $50 unfranked and an imputation credit of $28.12, the deposit would appear as shown below.
\n

\n
• The credit of $28.12 is credited to the asset account to be offset against future tax liabilities.
\n

Accounting for new shares purchased as part of a Dividend Reinvestment Plan

\n
1. Enter the receipt of your dividends through Receive Money, allocating the amount to your Dividends account then on 2^nd line enter asset shares at cost to add shares for reinvestment. Recommend to add number of shares and company
\n

 See our example below.

If you're looking for a way to record share dividend receipts, this article might be for you.

Support Note Guy,

I have 2 Income Accounts called Franked Dividends and Unfranked Dividends.

Income Account to include name of Company paying the Dividend if small number of investments eg FF Dividend - ANZ Bank.

I setup a Card called ANZ Bank - FF Dividend.

I like your idea of tracking the Franking Credit in MYOB.

Often this does not occur.

When Shares are reinvested, I prefer to use a Journal -

   Dr ANZ Bank      CR ANZ Bank   FF Dividend

Record Keeping is paramount when accounting for Investments.

Contract Notes must be kept for 5 years after the sale of the shares.

I suggest internet access with the Stockbroker and the Share Registry.

Hope this helps.

Duncan Smith

Business Advice + Tax 

It is most irritating that this is the ONLY post on recording Share Dividends in MYOB. What is even more sad is that the images do not display and the text does not describe the actual transactions. Is anyone able to re post an equivalent set of Journal Transactions?

Hi Shawky - when we upgraded the forum this year we did notice that some posts lost their original images.
A fix was put in place by the platform which we believed had worked to fix it, but it also wasnt possible for us to review every post in the forum for a full validation.

Thank you for identifying and raising the missing images on this and the 'handling a share portfolio' posts.
I have submitted a support ticket to the platform host to get this looked into and a further review of our older content.

Regards, Mike

Hi Shawky chottomattekat and Sjacob 
We were unable to recover the images I'm sorry to say. These were hosted outside of the platform for some reason which is why they did not transfer across.

I am going to reach out to some of our internal staff to see if they have the expertise to update (as it is 9 years old) this article and images.

I will caveat that because this topic is consider accounting advice it would typically sit outside the realm of what MYOB can advise on. We do have Accountants on staff (who I will be contacting) and who are members in the Community that may be able to help as well

Thank you so much for the update! This is great!

Thanks Mike

May I describe how I am solving dividends here?

Hi  Mike_MYOB , 

Just following up on this post. Has the images been restored for this post?

Thank you.

I would really like to see the images for this post!

Thank you for the update! Much appreciated!