8.6. Dividends
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## 8.6. Dividends

Some companies or mutual funds pay periodic dividends to shareholders. Dividends are typically given in one of two ways, either they are automatically reinvested into the commodity or they are given as cash. Mutual funds are often setup to automatically reinvest the dividend, while common stock dividends usually pay cash.

If you receive the dividend in the form of an automatic reinvestment, the transaction to account for this should be handled within the stock or mutual fund account as income from "Income:Dividend" for the appropriate number of reinvested shares.

If the dividend is presented as cash, you should record the transaction directly in the bank account that received the money, as income from "Income::Dividends" with a note mentioning from which commodity it was derived. There is no simple way to show this transaction from within the stock or mutual fund account itself.

| Note
If you want to track dividends on a per-stock basis, you would need to create an Income:Dividends:STOCKSYMBOL account for each stock you own that pays dividends.

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8.5. Setting Stock Price | Up | 8.7. Selling Stocks