Line of Credit setup help

Graebeard

In Quicken I have two Credit Cards and one Line of Credit. My problem is that while the Credit cards show as Negative balances (ie debts), my Line of Credit shows as Positive (ie Asset). So, any payment I make on my LoC credit increases my balance.

How do I convert the LoC from an Asset account to a Debt account?

UKR

I'm afraid, you're incorrect, at least for this type of accounts in the US. From your use of the word "Chequing" I assume you are in Canada.

In a US LOC or HELOC, you may have been given a maximum line of credit, e.g., $10,000 but the actual balance of the account is only the amount that you have actually withdrawn and transferred to the Checking account. You do not create an account register in Quicken for the entire line of credit amount, 10,000.00, because initially you don't have that much money in your hand.
Your LOC / HELOC account starts with an Opening Balance of $0.00
Just like in a credit card, you are allowed to withdraw up to the Credit Limit but not more.

So, when you transfer an initial amount of 1,000.00 to Checking,

• the LOC balance goes to -1,000.00
• and the Checking balance increases by 1,000.00

You pay that back over time, plus interest, until the balance reaches 0.00
If you need more money, you transfer some more money from LOC to Checking. You pay that back ... rinse and repeat ...
Over the years, before Quicken added a special HELOC account type to Quicken, LOCs and HELOCs were always recorded as Type = Credit Card, because that's how the data downloaded from the banks.

Sherlock

What is the Account type (open the register and press Ctrl + Shift + E)?

NotACPA

Also, in that account in Q, what DOLLAR columns are you showing, besides Balance?

And, in which of those columns are the first few entries.

SOMETIMES, the lender will download the entire available line as a transaction, whether you've used the entire amount or not.  So, after taking a backup, see if deleting that transaction helps.

Graebeard

Thanks to both of you.

The Account Type is Credit, since it's listed as a Credit Card,
and the Columns are: Charge, Payment, Amount and Balance

The Balance is Black and when the Interest is charged the Amount is Red and the Balance decreases.

When I make a Payment, the Amount is Black and the Balance increases.

It seems I may be missing something. With a Credit Card, there is a transfer of funds from my chequing account to Esso (for example). The CC is just a Transfer mechanism (charge IN and payment OUT). In Q, with the HELOC, there is a Charge in (from HELOC) but no transfer out, so it sees it as an increase to the balance.

So, what am I missing? I gather I can't redefine the Account as a LOAN type.

I can't find anything in Quicken's Help or on Youtube, and it's obviously doable by others, so a step by step set of instructions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Graebeard

HELOC's are not Credit Cards since their Balance and Payments are both treated as credits which means that if you have a $10K balance and you make a payment of $1K, the balance will increase to $11K, rather than decrease to $9K.

On a Credit Card, there is a set of Charges to various stores, etc, that remove funds from the CC to offset the payment.

In other words, a CC is a transfer point between the chequing account and the stores. (Chequing -> Card -> Stores)

In a HELOC, there is NO transferring of funds to an external account. (Chequing -> HELOC). Hence Quicken's Report is wrong.

Therefore there must be a way to make it work, but we need some guidance as to how to do that.

Thanks

UKR

I'm afraid, you're incorrect, at least for this type of accounts in the US. From your use of the word "Chequing" I assume you are in Canada.

In a US LOC or HELOC, you may have been given a maximum line of credit, e.g., $10,000 but the actual balance of the account is only the amount that you have actually withdrawn and transferred to the Checking account. You do not create an account register in Quicken for the entire line of credit amount, 10,000.00, because initially you don't have that much money in your hand.
Your LOC / HELOC account starts with an Opening Balance of $0.00
Just like in a credit card, you are allowed to withdraw up to the Credit Limit but not more.

So, when you transfer an initial amount of 1,000.00 to Checking,

• the LOC balance goes to -1,000.00
• and the Checking balance increases by 1,000.00

You pay that back over time, plus interest, until the balance reaches 0.00
If you need more money, you transfer some more money from LOC to Checking. You pay that back ... rinse and repeat ...
Over the years, before Quicken added a special HELOC account type to Quicken, LOCs and HELOCs were always recorded as Type = Credit Card, because that's how the data downloaded from the banks.

UKR

Why are you posting basically the same question in two discussions?

Please see my response to your other post in
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7848986/changing-to-a-heloc-account#latest

That should help answer your question.

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Changing to a HELOC account.

Graebeard

OK, created a new Q data file with nothing in it.

1 - Clicked on Add Account, then selected HELOC
2 - went thru logging in, etc, selected IGNORED all other accounts except my HELOC account.
3 - Had to select Credit card as there is no other option
4 - Once the account was created, the transactions for the past couple of months was added.
5 - I clicked on the account name in t he top left of the screen, and was given a summary sheet with this info (not the exact numbers, for privacy)

Date Payee Charge Payment Balance
===========================================================
May 26 Opening Balance 37593 37593
May 27 Auto Received Thanks 109 37702
June 6 Interest Advances 123 37579
etc etc

So, I had a balance of $37593 then I transferred $109 into the LOC acct and my balance owing went up instead of down.

6 - Then checked the Account Details tab and it shows account type is CREDIT.

I still don't understand how to set this up.

Is there a step-by-step set of instructions available ANYWHERE ??

Graebeard

BTW, Quicken's Help screen mentions the Simple Setup Wizard but I didn't see that anywhere when creating the HELOC account.