Dividend Income & Tracking

tradeGIST lets you track the income your portfolio generates from dividends. You record dividend events in the Transactions sheet, and the dedicated Dividends sheet turns them into a clear overview: how much income you have received, which holdings pay you, when the next payments are due, and how your dividend income is growing year over year.

Recording Dividend Transactions

Dividend events use the dividend Asset type in the Transactions sheet. Two operations are available:

income — Cash dividend

Use income when a dividend is paid to you as cash.

Column	Value
Asset type	dividend
Op	income
Ticker	The ticker of the company that paid the dividend (e.g. AAPL).
Volume	The total amount of cash received (not per share).
Price	Leave blank.
Currency	Set the currency the dividend was paid in.

A cash dividend does not affect your share holdings and does not generate a trade in the Trades sheet — it is purely an income record. It is excluded from trade matching, just like a cash deposit. The paying company's ticker and the FX rate are still preserved so the income is correctly attributed and converted to your base currency.

drip — Reinvested dividend

Use drip (Dividend Reinvestment Plan) when the dividend was automatically used to buy more shares.

Column	Value
Asset type	dividend
Op	drip
Ticker	The ticker of the company whose shares were bought (e.g. AAPL).
Volume	The number of shares acquired through reinvestment.
Price	(Required) The share price at the time of reinvestment.

Unlike income, a drip does add to your share holdings. It flows through trade matching and asset volume accounting exactly like a normal buy on the underlying equity, so the reinvested shares count toward your open position and cost basis.

Which one do I use?

If the cash hit your account, use income. If the broker automatically bought you more shares, use drip. You never need both for the same payment.

The Dividends Sheet

The Dividends sheet gives you a complete picture of the income side of your portfolio. It includes:

• Dividends received summary — a breakdown of the dividend income you have collected (from your income and drip transactions).
• Upcoming dividends calendar — a forward-looking view of expected ex-dividend and payout dates for your open dividend-paying holdings.
• Dividend-paying holdings overview — the equity assets in your portfolio that generate dividends, with their per-share and annualized payouts.
• Year-over-year growth chart — visualizes how your dividend income has grown across years.

The forward-looking information (per-share amounts, ex-dividend and payout dates) is populated from the Dividends section of the Configuration sheet, described below.

Dashboard: Expected vs. Actual Income

The Dashboard sheet features a "Monthly Income: Expected vs. Actual" chart that compares the dividend income you actually received each month against what you'd expect from your holdings.

Expected values are estimates

The Expected line is an approximation: it applies each asset's current annualized dividend per share to the shares you held in that month. Past dividend increases or cuts aren't reflected, so older months can differ from what was actually paid.

Dividend Configuration

The Dividends section in the Configuration sheet drives the calendar and the dividend-paying holdings overview. You don't build this list yourself: the Ticker column is automatically populated with your equity assets that currently have an open position. Only tickers you currently hold appear — fully closing a position removes its ticker from the list. The Ticker column is the one column you should never edit.

You always control the Data entry column. Its value decides who fills in the rest of the row: with Auto or Massive, the add-on fetches and writes the data columns for you; with Manual, those columns are left for you to fill in (and edit) yourself.

For each listed ticker, the add-on fetches the latest dividend data when you run Update dividends info.

Column	Filled by	Description
Ticker	Auto	Auto-populated with your equity holdings that have an open position. Don't edit this column.
DPS	Auto	The most recent dividend per share.
Annual DPS	Auto	The annualized dividend per share (per-payment amount × payment frequency).
Ex-Dividend Date	Auto	The next ex-dividend date.
Payout Date	Auto	The next payout (payment) date.
Dates estimated	Auto	TRUE when the dates are estimated from past frequency; FALSE when an upcoming dividend has already been declared.
Data entry	You	Controls how the row is updated: Auto / Massive (auto-fetch) or Manual (you fill the values in yourself).

Updating Dividend Information

To refresh the auto-filled columns, open the tradeGIST menu and click Update dividends info. It updates every ticker in the list (skipping rows whose Data entry is set to Manual), writing only the auto columns — your Ticker and Data entry cells, and any custom formula you've entered, are never overwritten.

Massive API key required

Update dividends info fetches data through Massive.com. You need a valid Massive API key set in the Settings dialog. Set a row's Data entry to Manual to enter the values yourself instead.

Override a single value with a formula

Because Update dividends info doesn't overwrite cells that contain formulas, you can correct one auto-filled value while leaving the rest to update automatically. This is handy for Annual DPS when a holding pays on an unusual or recently changed schedule and the estimate looks off. In the Annual DPS cell, enter a formula (not a plain number, which would be replaced on the next update) that multiplies the DPS cell by the number of payments per year — for example, if your DPS value is in F4, enter =F4*24 for a stock that pays twice a month, and the override keeps tracking future DPS changes.

Estimated vs. Announced Dates

The Dates estimated column tells you how confident the upcoming dates are:

• FALSE — the next dividend has already been declared, so the Ex-Dividend Date and Payout Date come straight from the announced figures.
• TRUE — the next dividend has not been announced yet, so the dates are estimated from the company's past payment schedule.

Once the company declares the dividend, the next run of Update dividends info replaces the estimate with the announced date and flips the flag to FALSE.

Referencing Dividend Data in Formulas

The DIVIDEND_VALUE() custom function lets you pull a specific dividend metric for any configured ticker into your own formulas (for example the dividend per share or the next payment date). See the Custom Functions reference for the full signature and the list of available metrics.

Disclaimer

Dividend forecasts (ex-dividend and payment dates, per-share amounts) are estimates based on publicly available data and a company's past payment history. Actual dividends are declared at the discretion of each company's board and may change. Always confirm against your broker's records.