Mortgage tracking

laurellyle

I've always tracked my mortgage manually, but would like to take advantage of the loan feature in Quicken. Our mortgage was transferred in February of this year and I thought I'd add it as a Connected Account. Can I import the activity since February and "match" the automatic payments coming out of my checking account?

Tom Young

"Can I import the activity since February and "match" the automatic payments coming out of my checking account? "

I'm not sure I'm following along with you here.  Mortgage payments coming out of your checking Account are only "matched" with subsequent downloads from the checking Account, and that match only deals with the amount of the check cashed without any reference to how the check was split between principal and interest.

On balance I'd recommend sticking with a manual loan.  With a downloading loan the only information "pushed" to you by the services is the principal reduction, there's no downloading of interest or escrow information.  Also, you have no access to the loan's register so you're at the servicer's mercy here and sometimes, for some reason, bad information is received.

The principal payment against the loan's outstanding balance is a "magical" entry since the entry only affects the loan balance without any offset to an Account or Category you can see in your file.  To offset the bit of magic Quicken's entry to the checking Account for a the principal portion of a payment is to a Category, (something like "Loan:Principal") when in reality the principal amount should be recorded as a Transfer. 

You can try it if you like and see if having a downloading loan works for you.  There is the ability to change back from "downloading" to "manual."

Chris_QPW

laurellyle said:

I've always tracked my mortgage manually, but would like to take advantage of the loan feature in Quicken. Our mortgage was transferred in February of this year and I thought I'd add it as a Connected Account. Can I import the activity since February and "match" the automatic payments coming out of my checking account?

Reading this question I think there are some misconceptions about what "Download loan account" will do for you.

First off even though it is possible to change a loan account that is being downloaded to a manual entry account, that opposite isn't true, you can't change a manual entry loan account to one that is downloaded.

Second they didn't implement this the way people thought it would be implemented.  Most people thought it would be that you kept the loan wizard doing the calculating of principal/interest and only downloading the amount that was going into the loan register to match.  This isn't how they implemented it.  The interest and principal is calculated by the financial institution and downloaded.  This means two things one they didn't have to worry about those crazy loans types that the financial institutions were thinking up for support in the loan wizard and they decided to "believe the financial institution".  As in the user gives up the ability to see/change anything in the loan register.

So what happens if the financial institution sends the wrong information?
The only way to fix it is to switch it back to manual entry.
And problems do seem to come up, there have been reports of loans being closed even when they still owe money.

This of course leads to the answer of you question about importing past activity.  You have absolutely no control over that, it just depends on what the financial institution sends.

And as for matching as @Tom Young said you are only going to be matching what is happening in your checking account, not what is happening in your loan account because you can't even see the transactions.

TBoy

With the absence of Loan Wizard in Quicken Subscription, my recurring loan payment no longer shows up in the checking register that it was paid from. Also, the remaining payment entry (with split) is frozen - I can't make any update on entry to indicate what kind of payment it is. I restored a file from Quicken 2017

Tom Young

"With the absence of Loan Wizard in Quicken Subscription, my recurring loan payment no longer shows up in the checking register that it was paid from. "

The Loan Wizard certainly is still there in the Windows subscription versions.  What makes you think it isn't.  As to the "my recurring loan payment no longer shows up in the checking register it was paid from" statement, I don't see how that follows from no longer having a payment show up in the checking Account.  If you set up a manual (non-downloading) loan in Quicken the Loan Wizard can place that payment in the checking Account at the anticipated payment date, to be later confirmed by a download from the bank.  So even if you're not using the Loan Wizard the payment itself should show up in the checking Account, even if you're not making a manual entry for the payment, by downloads of cashed check activity.

"Also, the remaining payment entry (with split) is frozen"

I don't know what that's referring to.  If payments aren't showing up in the checking Account then there's nothing to "split."  I'm kinda assuming this is referring to interest and maybe escrow payments, but that's not clear, and if payments aren't being registered in the first place, what's to split?

Maybe some screen shots of what you're seeing would help us understand.