Loan Amortization in Quicken for Mac (333 Legacy Votes)
petejake
Member
Add Loan Amortization! I can't believe this function is missing in a financial management software system! I've been a Quicken Windows user for years and I can't believe the Mac version was designed without the ability to track loan principal and interest. Please add this function!!!
1
Comments
Aside from that, and agreeing that loan amortization should absolutely be included in the program, its absence shouldn't be causing you as much pain as you're indicating it is. You have your liability/loan account, right? Each each month, you either download or have a scheduled monthly transaction in Quicken for your loan payment. You make that payment a split, with part categorized to interest expense and part transferred to the loan account. Quicken handles all this currently. So the only piece that's missing is the automatic calculation of how much of each month's payment is interest expense versus payment of the loan balance. So what I suggest you do is Google loan amortization schedule and choose one of the many free calculators out there (like this or this). Print your loan schedule or save it as a PDF. Now, each month, all you need to do is open the payment transaction and adjust the split amounts to match your schedule. It takes less than a minute each month. Again, I'm not arguing against Quicken implementing this much-requested functionality -- I'm only trying to show you it's relatively easy to work around until they do.
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(STILL using QM2007, Canadian user since '92)
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The good news is that it seems from the post by product manager Marcus above that this is one of the most-requested features users have been asking for, and they're working on it for a future release.
One thing that might help, if you aren't already doing this, is that you can set up a loan payment as a scheduled monthly transaction, with the payment from your checking account split between paying down the liability account and interest expense. Each month, all you need to do is edit the split transaction with the current month's interest and principal amounts. While it's not automated the way it ought to be, it's something most people can do in about a minute each month if you've printed out an amortization schedule, or log into toy loan to see the split amounts. (Again, I'm not suggesting this is the way it should be, just trying to help until they get the functionality added to the program.)
(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)
If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.
(STILL using QM2007, Canadian user since '92)
Have Questions? Check out these FAQs:
I'm just pointing this out to note that it's not quite as obvious or easy a change as it might at first seem. But hopefully they will add a way to budget for money transfer which are, for budgeting purposes viewed as expenses, even though for financial purposes they are simply transfers of funds that are not expenses.