Declare a dividend for a director

POSThttps://app.speybooks.com/api/v1/dividends/

Declares a dividend to a shareholder against an approved board resolution. The resolution must be in the approved state and the recipient must be an active director who holds shares; a declaration against a fully allocated or voided resolution, or to a non-shareholder, is refused. The amount cannot exceed the resolution's remaining allocation, and on success that allocation is decremented and the cumulative declared total increased, with the resolution moving to fully allocated once nothing remains. A unique voucher number is assigned.

When journal creation is requested, the declaration posts its double-entry journal, debiting dividends declared as an appropriation of retained profit and crediting the dividend liability owed to the shareholder. A payment by director loan offset additionally clears that liability against the director's loan account and records the dividend as paid at declaration. The declaration is recorded in the audit trail.

Body parameters

amountPenceintegeroptional
Gross dividend amount in pence. Cannot exceed the remaining allocation on the board minutes.
boardMinutesIdstringoptional
Board minutes ID authorising this dividend (e.g. bmin_1). Must be in approved status.
createJournalbooleanoptional
Whether to create double-entry journal entries. Defaults to true.
datestringoptional
Dividend declaration date (YYYY-MM-DD).
date
directorIdstringoptional
Director/shareholder ID receiving the dividend (e.g. dir_1). Must be an active shareholder.
notesstringoptional
Optional notes (max 2000 characters).
paymentMethodstringoptional
How the dividend will be paid. dla_offset automatically creates DLA journal entries and marks as paid.
bank_transferdla_offsetcheque
shareClassstringoptional
Share class for this dividend. Defaults to Ordinary.

Response

201Dividend declared. Returns the dividend object with voucher number and journal transaction ID.
Show response fields
amountPenceinteger
idstring
statusstring
voucherNumberstring

Error codes

400Validation error, insufficient allocation, or director is not a shareholder.
404Board minutes or director not found.
409No accounting period set for this limited company.