Account type for dividends in corporate accounting?

General
1

Hello, everyone.

Do any of the PTA apps support an account type for dividends as used in corporate accounting?

hledger and Beancount support the 5 primary account types (Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Revenue/Income, and Expenses), but in corporate accounting there is a 6th account type for Dividends -- the D in the acronyms ADExLER, DEALER, RED ALE, etc.

I'm curious if there is a PTA app that supports all 6 account types.

The important distinction is that dividends are outflows which don't affect the profit calculated in an accounting period. Dividends don't appear on the income statement.

In personal finance, I think a similar argument could made for charitable donations or large, one-time gifts. It could be beneficial to separate such irregular outflows from regular expenses. That would allow for clearer comparisons of regular expenses over multiple periods.

2

Dividends are equity accounts. They are not 6th distinct element. You can(should) just use equity.

2026-11-05 Dividend Payout
    Equity:Dividends        $1,000
    Assets:Checking        -$1,000

In personal finance, I think a similar argument could made for charitable donations or large, one-time gifts. It could be beneficial to separate such irregular outflows from regular expenses.

I think what you're looking for is OCI(negative OCI, to be precise). Wikipedia

2026-11-05 Large One-time Donation
    Equity:OCI:Donations                   $10,000
    Assets:Bank:Checking                  -$10,000

In my experience, this actually harms accurate reporting. I get that the idea is to keep the P&L clean and predictable, but sweeping massive amounts into OCI hides the true scale of what's happening and defeats the whole purpose, at least that was the case for me.

3

I had not heard of DEALER. Here's some more context: