Once you’ve decided and approved a dividend payment, the process of calculating, making payments and reporting shareholder dividends can be time-consuming and prone to human error.
Orchestra's dividend statements automate the process and save you time by:
- Calculating individual shareholder dividend amounts
- Producing professional dividend statements for shareholders
- Emailing out dividend statement notifications to shareholders
- Storing dividend statements in shareholders' Orchestra portal for future access at their convenience
- Producing company dividend statements including useful reporting downloads that can be used for tasks such as filing dividend withholding tax to Inland Revenue.
Please note:
- This feature has been developed for fully imputed cash dividends.
- Where non-resident shareholders exist (subject to NRWT) supplementary dividends are included by default.
- If you would like Orchestra to support a different type of dividend distribution, please get in touch.
Getting ready: Ensure shareholder details are up-to-date
A prerequisite to a smooth dividend distribution is ensuring you have accurate, up-to-date shareholder details. Notably these are:
- Name
- Physical address
- NZ IRD number
- Whether they are non-resident (and if so, what NRWT rate are they subject to)
- Whether they are RWT exempt
Any shareholder within an Orchestra profile that is using the dividends feature has access to supply all of this information by clicking ‘Custom fields’. As an administrator you can also edit these fields on their behalf.
Tip: Use Orchestra’s communications module to ask shareholders to log in and ensure their details are up-to-date ahead of a distribution.
Want help importing all of these details? The Orchestra team can do a bulk data import of shareholder dividend information for a service charge: reach out.
How to create a new dividend distribution
For a step by step overview have a look at our video on how to create a dividend distribution in Orchestra.
To create a dividend distribution you will need to be logged in and have access as a company administrator to make any changes. From your company dashboard, click 'Dividends' in the left side menu and ‘New dividend distribution’.
To complete your dividend distribution you will need to know your:
- Gross dividend amount (NZD) - this is the declared dividend amount including imputation credits and is pre-tax
- Imputation credits (NZD) - these are your tax credits
Complete the dividend form:
- Title - give your dividend distribution a name such as FY2024 H1 (eg. denoting full year 2024 first half).
- Declared date - dividend entitlements are calculated based on shareholdings at this date.
- Distribution date - the date on which you intend to make the dividend payment to shareholders.
- Select eligible share class(es) - if the dividend distribution requires different apportioning according to share class then select one class only and create a second dividend distribution for your other share class.
- Gross dividend amount (NZD) - this is the declared dividend amount including imputation credits and is pre-tax. Note: If you don’t know your gross dividend amount and imputation credits then check with your accountant before continuing.
- Dividend per share (NZD) - this field is auto populated when you enter your gross dividend amount (NZD).
- Imputation credits (NZD) - these are your tax credits attached to dividends paid by New Zealand companies, designed to prevent double taxation by allowing shareholders to offset their tax liabilities.
- Imputation ratio (%) - this field is auto populated when you enter your imputation credits and should equal 28% for a fully imputed cash dividend.
Click ‘Continue’ to review the distribution.
Review the distribution
Review your generated dividend distribution and generated dividend statements thoroughly. You can hover over each figure in the table of generated dividend statements for shareholders to see the formula used to calculate the figure.
Dividend statements for any shareholder can be viewed by clicking on the ‘Download PDF’ button in the far right column (‘Statement’).
To review the company dividend statement PDF click on the ‘Draft company statement’ button.
To export the table of all shareholders’ applicable details (IRD number, address etc) and dividend amounts, click on the ‘Export as CSV’ button.
Publish your dividend
When you’re happy that your dividend calculations are exactly right, click on the ‘Create and publish’ button to finalise your dividend distribution. Or 'Save as draft' to return later.
Click ‘Confirm’ that you are willing for investors to be automatically notified via email that their dividend statement is available to be viewed and downloaded from their personal Orchestra account.
Shareholders can login to Orchestra any time to view and download published dividend statements.
Inland Revenue dividend withholding tax bulk filing upload
From your dividend page, click on 'Download reports' and 'Export IR DWT bulk upload'.
Enter a name and phone number for the primary company contact for Inland Revenue. Click on 'Export as CSV'. A .csv file is exported to your downloads folder ready to be uploaded to your myIR account.
Login to myIR. Select 'Dividend withholding tax' and 'Returns and transactions'. Select the period to submit a DWT return for. The month to select is the month containing the 'Distribution date' for your dividend. For example if your distribution date is 25 September 2023 then the period to select in myIR will be 30-Sep-2023.
In myIR select a 'Data entry method' of 'Upload file >'. Choose the file to upload from your computer.
If the file you upload to myIR has any errors, correct the data in Orchestra, and re-export your IR DWT bulk upload file from Orchestra.
Please note:
- The IR DWT csv file exported from Orchestra has been coded specifically to meet IRD import requirements. If you open the csv file in a spreadsheet application and save it, changes will occur in the file and it will no longer be importable to myIR (it will error). Make your corrections in Orchestra, then re-export the file.
- If you wish to change some of the details in the csv file, edit with a Text Editor (such as TextEdit.app) to preserve the correct file format for myIR.
Disclaimer
Orchestra does not provide advice of any kind.
Orchestra's dividend feature is currently in beta, and as such, reliability cannot be guaranteed. Maintaining accurate and timely shareholding details (including using the dates share transactions occurred - not when they were recorded at the Companies Office - and ensuring shareholders correctly declare their withholding tax rates) in Orchestra is a critical part of the process for accurate calculations.
The generated dividend statement calculations should be checked to ensure the company advisor / administrator is satisfied.
Orchestra does not take responsibility for dividend payments that were incorrectly calculated, distributed and/or filed to tax authorities.