The short answer
Clean price excludes accrued coupon interest; dirty price includes it. In consistent units, dirty price = clean price + accrued interest. Scale a per-$100 quote by face amount ÷ 100, then reconcile separately disclosed charges.[1][3]
The quote is not necessarily the cash debit
CFI describes clean prices, excluding accrued interest, as typical U.S. bond quotes and defines dirty price as clean price plus accrued interest.[3] FINRA explains that a buyer compensates a seller for the coupon interest accumulated between payments, generally by adding it to the bond’s contract price.[1] These are two views of the same transaction, not two competing estimates of fair value. The word dirty describes the inclusion of interest; it does not mean the bond is defective or the broker has imposed a penalty.
Start by copying the exact field labels from the order preview. Is the displayed price clean, full, or already inclusive of accrued interest? Is the interest line per $100 or a dollar total for the entire purchase? Adding a total-dollar interest amount directly to a per-$100 quote mixes units. Adding interest to a price that already includes it counts the same item twice. Keep separately disclosed charges outside this clean-to-dirty reconciliation.
Translate a quote per $100 into dollars
FINRA says bond quotes are typically percentages of par expressed on a point scale: its example of 95 means 95 percent of face value, not a $95 total purchase.[1] In the hypothetical worksheet here, assume a clean quote of 98.50 per $100 face amount and a purchase of $10,000 face amount. The clean dollar amount is 98.50 × (10,000 ÷ 100) = $9,850. The $10,000 is face amount, not the cash budget and not the clean price.
All numbers in this worksheet are invented teaching inputs, not current offers or September 2026 bond observations. Use a 6% annual coupon paid twice a year. The assumed annual coupon dollars are 10,000 × 0.06 = $600, and each regular semiannual payment is $300. Calculate the coupon from the assumed face amount, not from the $9,850 clean purchase amount; otherwise the later interest calculation starts with the wrong base.
Make the day-count assumption explicit
Saxo presents accrued interest as the period’s coupon payment multiplied by elapsed days divided by days in the coupon period, and describes 30/360 as a convention usually used for corporate bonds.[6] For this example only, assume the applicable 30/360 rules produce 60 accrued days out of a regular 180-day semiannual period at settlement. These are stipulated convention-day inputs, not a claim that any two calendar months always contain 60 actual days.
Accrued interest is therefore $300 × 60 ÷ 180 = $100 for the entire holding. Per $100 face amount, the semiannual coupon is $3 and accrued interest is $3 × 60 ÷ 180 = $1. Do not multiply the $600 annual coupon by 60 ÷ 180: that would double the result. For a real trade, obtain the actual settlement date, coupon dates and security-specific day-count method before calculating; this guide does not determine month-end adjustments or the settlement cycle.
Reconcile the dirty price and the total
Using the same hypothetical inputs, dirty price is 98.50 + 1.00 = 99.50 per $100 face amount. Scaling gives 99.50 × 100 = $9,950. The independent dollar check is $9,850 clean amount + $100 accrued interest = $9,950. Both routes must agree. The price remains below the assumed $10,000 face amount even though the settlement amount exceeds the clean amount; those are different comparisons.
Here $9,950 is the bond amount including accrued interest, before any separate charges. If, purely for illustration, a confirmation also lists a separate $10 transaction charge not already included, the cash debit becomes $9,960. Do not call that extra $10 accrued interest, and do not add it again if it is already included elsewhere. This conditional example does not establish any broker’s fee schedule, markup treatment or rounding policy.
The next coupon is not all new earnings
Saxo explains the reason for the adjustment: the registered holder receives the coupon, while the seller must be compensated for the portion of the period already held.[6] Assume the example’s buyer is entitled to the next full $300 coupon and that it is paid as scheduled. The buyer previously paid $100 of accrued interest to the seller, so $300 − $100 = $200 is the remaining coupon cash after that prior accrued-interest outlay in this simplified worksheet.
That $200 is not a complete investment return. The worksheet does not model a sale price, redemption, reinvestment, default, taxes or financing costs. Receiving a coupon does not by itself prove that the investment made a profit. Nor does buying just before a coupon date turn the whole upcoming payment into free income: under the assumed accrual method, a larger elapsed fraction means a larger accrued-interest payment to the seller.
Use a settlement checklist, not the bill-discount formula
For a real reconciliation, retain the security identifier, face amount, quote basis, agreed price, coupon rate and frequency, previous and next coupon dates, settlement date, day-count convention, accrued-interest amount and separately disclosed charges. Ask the broker to explain any mismatch in those fields before treating the screen quote as the amount of cash required. A review date on this educational article does not certify any live bond price.
This guide starts with a coupon-bearing bond’s agreed clean price and adds a portion of a periodic coupon. It does not convert a Treasury bill discount rate into a purchase price. Do not import the bill worksheet’s rate or time denominator merely because a 360 appears here: this example uses 60/180 of a semiannual coupon under an expressly assumed convention. Bonds outside the stated scope need their own documentation rather than an automatic application of this example.
Sources & scope
Links support definitions and methodology. Worked examples are hypothetical, not quotes; the review date is not the observation date of a market value.
- FINRA — Bonds ↗
Source date: Not stated in the retrieved body · Verified: 2026-09-20
- Corporate Finance Institute — Dirty Price ↗
Source date: 2020-08-21 · Verified: 2026-09-20
- Saxo — What are accrued interests on bonds? ↗
Source date: Not stated in the retrieved body · Verified: 2026-09-20