Whether you are a die-hard dividend investor or someone who holds several stocks that just happen to pay regular dividends, keeping track of how much dividend income you are going to be earning will be important to you.
The problem is that it can be very difficult to do this yourself if you hold numerous stocks. Personally, I have 23 different stocks in my portfolio and about two-thirds of them pay some sort of dividend, and it is impossible to keep track of when these dividends are due.
I am always receiving random notifications when I wake up in the morning, “you have received a dividend from McDonald’s”. But I never know when these dividends are coming or how much they are going to be.
A Google Drive Dividend Tracker was too much effort
I toyed with the idea of trying to build my own dividend tracker in Google Sheets, but as soon as I started I realised just how much work it would be to build and also maintain/update.
This wasn’t worth the time as my dividend income was fairly small to begin with, but still enough to fill up my car with petrol or buy some shopping every month.
The solution I ended up finding was much better – Stock Events App and in the rest of this blog post I will show you how their dividend tracker feature works.
Stock Events App Review
First of all the Stock Events App is available both on Android and iOS unlike some other dividend trackers out there which are only available on for Apple devices.
You can do a lot with the free features that are available on the App – the dividend income tracker which we are most interested in can be used for free.
If you wanted to upgrade to a pro plan this would cost you €34.99 per annum and you would unlock the following additional features.
| Pro Account Features |
|---|
| Unlimited Stocks on your watchlist |
| Unlimited watchlists |
| Additional portfolio analytics |
| Notifications on upcoming IPOs |
| The ability to create custom collections |
The app is also very useful if you need someplace to monitor and track the overall value of your portfolio. If you hold investments in multiple different brokerages then you can add all your stocks, crypto, and commodities into one portfolio to see how your overall wealth is increasing and decreasing.
But for this blog post we are just going to focus on its feature which enables you to track your dividend income.
How to set up your Dividend Tracker
First of all, if you want to add a position to your portfolio on the Stock Events App then you just simply click the search button as per below screenshot, and then you type in the ticker of the stock you want to add.
For this example, we are adding 10 shares of Toyota stock – in the share bar you enter your exact holding amount so the Stock Events App will be able to correctly calculate your upcoming dividends.
Once you have all your positions added you can toggle to the dividends section of the application to access your Dividend income tracker. Here they will give you an annual, monthly, and daily summary of your dividend income. Additional metrics are available such as your dividend yield for your portfolio if you are on the pro plan.
The Stock Events App also has a great analytics section that allows you to see when exactly you can expect to receive your dividend income. This will really help you plan for how much you will be receiving. As you can see from the below screenshot, based on my portfolio I know I will be expecting €166.36 in dividend income in March.
You can go one step further and click into each month and see what dividends are coming in and what days, in particular, they will be paid.
Final Thoughts
This application is also very useful for building your dividend portfolio strategy. You can add in a mix of dividend stocks and retest it to see what will maximise your dividend income.
If you plan on using your dividend income to fund your lifestyle you may also be interested in spreading out the times your receive dividend income as evenly as possible so you have a consistent monthly income.
With this app, you will be able to quickly identify with the dividend tracker which months have income levels lower than what you require.
If you found this post interesting then you might also be interested in learning about how US dividends are taxed in Ireland:
Disclaimer: This blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice.
