Introduction
If your company pays dividends to shareholders, you can record these distributions in your Ledgy cap table. This helps you maintain an accurate financial history and provide stakeholders with transparent documentation of their returns.
Who can record dividends: You need to be an account admin in Ledgy to create dividend distributions.
What are dividend distributions?
Dividend distributions are payments made by a company to its shareholders from the company's profits or reserves. Dividends are typically paid proportionally based on share ownership (for example, £0.50 per share).
Types of dividends
Interim dividends - Paid during the financial year
Final dividends - Paid after year-end, usually requiring shareholder approval
Special dividends - One-off payments from exceptional profits
Dividend rights by share class
Different share classes may have different dividend rights. Preference shares often receive dividends first, before common shares. Some share classes may have fixed dividend rates or cumulative rights. Always check your share class terms to understand dividend priorities.
How to record dividends
Step 1: Create the dividend distribution
Go to Ownership > Transactions > Add Transaction > Other > Dividends.
Step 2: Enter dividend details
In the modal window, enter:
Dividend date - When the dividend is declared or paid
Share class - Which share class receives this dividend
Dividend value per share - The amount paid per share (e.g., £0.50)
Currency - The payment currency
Stakeholder filter (optional) - Filter which stakeholders receive this dividend. You can filter by individual stakeholders, groups (e.g. Sales, Engineering), or custom field values (e.g. Department: Finance). Leave this field empty to include all stakeholders in the selected share class, which is the default behaviour.
Tip: The stakeholder filter lets you target dividend payouts to a specific segment of your cap table. For example, you could distribute dividends only to stakeholders in a particular group or those matching a custom field value. If you don't apply any filter, the dividend will be distributed to all stakeholders in the selected share class — the same behaviour as before.
Ledgy will show how many payout transactions will be generated based on the number of shareholders in that share class.
Step 3: Save to create draft payouts
Click Save to create draft payout transactions. Ledgy automatically generates one payout transaction for each shareholder, calculated by multiplying the dividend per share by their number of shares.
Example: A £0.50 dividend per share for a shareholder with 1,000 shares creates a £500 payout transaction.
After creating the dividend distribution, you can review and manage the draft payout transactions before publishing.
Note: There are two ways to control which shareholders receive the dividend payout. First, when creating the dividend, you can use the optional stakeholder filter to target specific individuals, groups, or custom field segments upfront. Second, after the draft payouts are generated, you can manually select or deselect individual shareholders before publishing.
Once you've confirmed the payouts are correct, click on Publish Selection to finalise. After publishing, the dividend payouts become part of your transaction history and are visible to stakeholders with access.
Recording dividends for multiple share classes
If you have multiple share classes with different dividend rights, create separate dividend distributions for each class. This allows you to set different amounts per share and respect priority payment orders