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Dividend reinvestments

The dividend reinvestment feature in Sharesight allows you to record dividend reinvestments. You can choose to record a dividend reinvestment when you add or edit a dividend. When a dividend reinvestment is recorded, a dividend reinvestment trade for the new shares is recorded in your portfolio, in addition to the dividend record.

Why do you need to set up DRP in Sharesight? Sharesight only picks up market buy and sell transactions from your broker. If you have instructed your share registry to reinvest your dividends instead of paying them as cash, you need to reflect that in Sharesight as well — otherwise your holding quantity and cost base will be inaccurate.

Important: Automatic DRP is only available for select ASX and NZX listed holdings where the company has offered a Dividend Reinvestment Plan and Sharesight has the DRP data available. All other holdings — including international stocks — must use manual DRP. In some cases the DRP price is available for some dividends of a holding but not all of them.

Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEPxEoen7QQ

Before you start

Before setting up DRP, check the following:

When did the reinvestment start? Was it from your very first dividend, or did it begin partway through (e.g. from the 3rd or 4th dividend)? This affects which dividends need to be confirmed as cash payments before enabling auto DRP.
Did you switch between cash and reinvestment? If you toggled the DRP on or off at any point, you will need to handle each period separately.
Are your dividends unconfirmed? Auto DRP can only be applied to unconfirmed (system-generated) dividends. If dividends have already been confirmed as cash, you will need to reset them before reinvestment can be applied.

Getting this right ensures your holding quantity and cost base are accurate from the start.

Manual DRP

Use manual DRP if:

Your holding is listed outside the ASX or NZX (e.g. US, UK, or other international stocks)
Your ASX or NZX holding does not have the automatic DRP option available in Sharesight

1 — On the Portfolio Investments page, select the holding you would like to set the dividend to reinvest on.

2 — On the Individual Holding page, select the Trades & Income tab and click on Confirm link on the dividend you would like to reinvest.

DRP 2

3 — On the dividend payment form, tick Dividend Reinvestment.

DRP-3

4 — Enter the number of shares you received.

5 — Either enter the share price or click on the automated price below the box.

6 — Click Save and confirm payout.

DRP

Enable automatic DRP

When available, the automatic dividend reinvestment function can be accessed via the Holding Settings section on the individual share detail page. The dividend reinvestment is enabled individually for each share holding.

To access this option, navigate to the holding page and click on the 'edit holding' tab.

track dividend reinvestment - 1 (1)

Edit holding tab

Switch on DRP

Turning on the automatic dividend reinvestment feature will automatically create a dividend reinvestment trade for any system created dividends for which we have the dividend reinvestment plan data available. This means that a dividend reinvestment trade will automatically be recorded for any historic system created dividends, as well as for future dividends. The status of the system created dividends are indicated as 'unconfirmed'.

After enabling auto DRP, go back to the Trades & Income tab. You should see a Review automatic transactions prompt at the top. Click on this to see a list of all unconfirmed dividend and reinvestment transactions. Reconcile these against your share registry or broker statement, then click Confirm selection to confirm them all.

If you do not want to create dividend reinvestment trades for your historic system created dividends you need to save these dividends first. Save any existing system created dividends by clicking on 'confirm' and then clicking the 'save and confirm' button (the dividend status will be changed to 'confirmed').

The automatic dividend reinvestment function works best with DRP's subject to full participation. For partial DRP's, open each unconfirmed reinvestment and adjust the default quantity reinvested before saving.

DRP Rounding

Tracking residual balances can improve the accuracy of automatically calculated dividend reinvestments by allowing you to specify additional rounding and carry-forward options as per the company's DRP plan.

Select the best option that matches your DRP plan from the menu and click on 'apply all changes'.

DRP Settings

Round down — Rounds down the shares allocated as a result of the DRP, so the residual value is lost.
Round to the nearest — Standard rounding rules will apply.
Round up — Rounds up the shares allocated as a result of a DRP.
Round down and track balance — Rounds down the shares allocated as a result of a DRP, and any residual balance will be carried forward to the next dividend reinvestment. If you select this option your first unconfirmed dividend will have a DRP balance of $0.00 by default (you may edit this if you wish). The balance is then carried forward for calculating the next dividend.

Important: If you select round down and track balance, it is vital to confirm dividends in chronological order!

Partial DRP

If you did not start reinvesting from your very first dividend — for example, the first 3 dividends were paid as cash and reinvestment started from the 4th — you need to handle the earlier dividends first:

1 — Confirm the cash dividends (the ones paid before reinvestment started) one by one. Click Confirm on each dividend and save it without ticking Dividend Reinvestment.

2 — Once those are confirmed, go to the Edit holding tab and enable Automatically reinvest dividends.

3 — Return to the Trades & Income tab, click Review automatic transactions, reconcile the remaining unconfirmed dividends against your registry, and click Confirm selection.

This ensures only the correct dividends have reinvestment trades applied.

Disable automatic DRP

The automatic dividend reinvestment function can be disabled by unticking the auto DRP option. The dividend reinvestment is disabled individually for each shareholding. Turning off the automatic dividend reinvestment will automatically delete the dividend reinvestment trade for any system created dividends. System created dividends are indicated as 'unconfirmed':

Switch off DRP

If you do not want to delete the dividend reinvestment trades for your historic system created dividends you need to save these dividends first. Save any existing system created dividends by clicking on the dividend and then clicking the 'save and confirm' button (the dividend status will be changed to 'confirmed').

Delete a dividend reinvestment

To delete a dividend reinvestment click on either the dividend record or the dividend reinvestment trade and un-tick the 'dividend reinvested' tick box, then click the 'save changes' button.

Residual balances

The residual balance carries forward the small cash amount left over after DRP shares are rounded down, so it is included in the next dividend reinvestment calculation.

The residual balance details are available under the Your Investment section of the Summary tab.

Residual-banalce

Editing or resetting the residual balance

If your residual balance does not match your dividend statement, you can correct it:

1 — Navigate to the holding and open the next unconfirmed dividend reinvestment.

2 — Find the DRP balance field and update the value to match your statement — or enter $0.00 to reset it.

3 — Click Save and confirm payout.

Note: Always confirm dividends in chronological order when using the round down and track balance setting, as each balance carries forward to the next.

When a company stops offering DRP

If a holding stops offering a Dividend Reinvestment Plan:

1 — Disable automatic DRP on the holding.

2 — If the company returns your outstanding residual balance as a cash payment, record it as a Return of Capital or add it to your next dividend as additional income.

3 — Reset the residual balance to $0.00 by opening the most recent dividend, setting the DRP balance field to $0.00, and saving.

Troubleshooting

Quantity in Sharesight doesn't match my broker after enabling auto DRP

Enabling auto DRP does not immediately fix quantity discrepancies. To find the correct quantities, check your share registry — the two most common registries for ASX-listed companies are Link Market Services and Computershare. You can find which registry a company uses on the company's website or the ASX website.

Look for Dividend plan allotment transactions in your registry — these show exactly how many shares you received for each dividend reinvestment. Compare each entry against Sharesight and correct any that differ.

Link Market Services:

1 — Log in to your Link Market Services account.

2 — Click Shortcut > Transaction History.

3 — Under the Transaction column, find Dividend plan allotment entries — these show the shares received for each reinvestment.

4 — Compare each entry against the corresponding unconfirmed reinvestment in Sharesight. Edit the quantity on any that don't match, then save and confirm.

Computershare:

1 — Log in to your Computershare account.

2 — Click Portfolio > View details.

3 — Find the Dividend plan allotment transactions — these show the shares received for each reinvestment.