Mortgage Transfers recorded as income on Q Reports

williamspl

Why are Mortgage Transfers (to Mortgage account and Escrow Account) in Mortgage payments recorded as input on Q Reports

Tom Young

Transactions of that nature are called "transfers" in Quicken-speak and they will show up on Quicken reports if, under "Customize" > "Advanced", down in the "Transfers" area, you've allowed them to be included.

williamspl

Tom,

I saw the "Transfers" options under Customize > Advanced; however I cannot find the right option to see all my income entries and Not the "Mortgage" transfers.

The closest that I can get is using "Exclude Internals"; but with this option I still see the "Mortgage" transfer amounts shown on my Income Report.

Any other ideas?

Many thanks!

Tom Young

It would be helpful to know exactly what reports you're looking at and how you have setup your mortgage loan.

If your mortgage loan is setup as a downloading loan, then the clearing of the check in the checking Account and what goes on in the mortgage loan Account are largely independent of one another.

In a downloading loan you have no access to the loan register itself and are reliant on what the lender "pushes" to that Account.  All they send into that Account is the principal payment.  It's what some people call a "one sided" entry in that the offset is to the same mortgage loan Account.  This one transaction has the effect of increasing your net worth: the balance of your liability goes down without the offsetting effect of a decrease in cash.  In order to offset this very incorrect accounting, Quicken creates a principal loan payment using a "Category" instead of an Account.  This has the offsetting effect of decreasing your net worth; in "real accounting" a principal payment isn't an "expense", it's a transfer.

Maybe this is what you're seeing?

williamspl

Tom,

Sorry, I used "Input" in this title instead of "Income". Perhaps you knew what I meant.

Two of the erroneous transactions shown on the Income Report are "Escrow" Refund checks that were returned to our Escrow account, see below ...

I recently refinanced and see some transaction error that could be the source of the other errors. I will correct these and let you know.
Is there a better way to handle the refund checks and keep them out of income?

Many thanks!

Tom Young

The image you posted of the transaction looks like a transfer to me.  If this transaction is showing up in an income and expense report as a form of income, then Quicken is not excluding transfers for this particular report, at least not this one.
If this transaction is included as income on a report then it will show up differently than a regular Category transaction.  It will read FROM [Flagstar Escrow].  That means that particular Account is selected to"feed" the report.  

williamspl

Tom,

OK, my bad for this transaction; it is a deposit to our checking account and we left it there, so we should treat this as Misc Income since we did not put it in the Escrow account.

However, look at this actual mortgage payment and our Refi transaction that also appear on the Income Report.

Tom Young

It looks like you posted the same transaction twice instead of two different transactions. 

I assume we are looking at column three here and the numbers shown are some combination of the "payment" and "refi" transaction, but I can't explain what you're seeing.  The line items in the income and expense report look exactly like Categories but the one transaction you posted consists entirely of Transfers and as far as I know transfers look like "From [Account name]" and "To [Account name]" in income and expense reports.  I assume you don't have Categories named "Flagstar Bank" and "Harvey & Vallini LLC", right?

Something's seems off here and I don't think I can explain what you're seeing without being able to actually cruise through your Quicken file.  This probably is a time to contact Quicken support

https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-support-options

and allow them to screen share.