How to set up manual mortgage account?

stainton

I recently unconnected my mortgage account (under Property & Debt), and now I'd like to set the account up (manually) so that I can see each monthly payment, with an accurate breakdown of principal and interest as they change. How can I do this?

stainton

Oh...I'm using Quicken Deluxe (6.0.3) for Mac.

Quicken Francisco

Hello @stainton

Thank you for reaching out on the community and telling us about your issue. I do apologize for the issue you're having. My recommendation for breaking this down would be to use the transaction that you likely have in your checking account for the mortgage payment. From there you'll want to split the transaction. The principal will go to the account and you'll want to set the category as the mortgage account so that it reflects on the account. The rest will go to the interest and you can put the category as what you see best fit for tracking the interest.

This is generally the best way I believe to track it since it's easily changeable if you need to make any adjustments but let me know how it works for you! If you have any questions please let us know.

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

jacobs

First, you want to change your existing Loan account to a Liability account. Go to Account settings and you'll see a button next to Type=Loan to do that. 

If your liability account has the establishment of the loan, you're ready to move on. If you need to, adjust the starting balance or make an adjustment to get your account current.

Now you need an amortization schedule to tell you how much of each payment goes to interest and how much to paying down the principal. There are lots of interest/amortization calculators you can find with a quick Google search, where you can input the balance, number of payments and interest rate, and generate a schedule showing the breakdown of interest and principal for each payment. Print this schedule, as you'll need to use it to update the interest versus principal each month.

Finally, create a scheduled transaction in Quicken for the monthly payment. Each payment you make from your checking account will be a split, with a portion categorized to Interest Income and a portion categorized as a Transfer to the liability account. Set the schedule of the transaction for the frequency and duration of your loan, and it will pop up every month.

As each payment occurs, you'll click on the next scheduled transaction and mark it Paid. Then double-click on the transaction and update the split of interest versus principal payment according to the schedule you previously generated.

That might sound like a lot to do, but honestly it's pretty straightforward. Once you have the account created, the starting balance set, and the scheduled transaction, it takes only a few seconds each month to adjust the interest/principal split.