# Account type for dividends in corporate accounting?

**URL:** <https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/account-type-for-dividends-in-corporate-accounting/933>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [November 4, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/account-type-for-dividends-in-corporate-accounting/933 "2026-11-04T13:56:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![johnm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@johnm](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/johnm)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/account-type-for-dividends-in-corporate-accounting/933/1 "2026-11-04T13:56:27Z")

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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.

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**Author:** ![shlewislee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@shlewislee](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/shlewislee)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2026, 1:23pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/account-type-for-dividends-in-corporate-accounting/933/2 "2026-11-05T13:23:48Z")

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

```auto
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_other_comprehensive_income#Other_comprehensive_income)

```auto
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.

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**Author:** ![simonmic](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/simonmic/32/1_2.png) [@simonmic](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/simonmic)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2026, 6:02pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/account-type-for-dividends-in-corporate-accounting/933/3 "2026-11-05T18:02:02Z")

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

> **[Lydia Cuff Blog: Rules of Debits and Credits: Why the DEALER Acronym Is Not...](https://www.lydiacuff.com/2026/07/rules-of-debits-and-credits-why-dealer.html)**
>
> xxxxx