Quicken (Canada) doesn't calculate mortgage payments properly

Question

Hi,

I've been using Quicken for some 30 years but I'm really getting tired of wasting hours every time I deal with mortgages. I haven't even tried to close my previous property account yet because the process is so awkward.

Anyway, trying to create a new mortgage for my new place, I entered the information requested and ended up with a principal+interest payment that's just under $39 less than what the bank calculated. I double-checked my entries and even tried alternate options, just in case I was too sleepy this morning and missed something. :)

Something similar happened when I renewed my mortgage on my previous property a few years ago, though the calculation was off by less than $2 and I ended up editing it before registering the transaction every. second. week. Needless to say, five years of that is enough. This should just work.

Payments are every other week (26 payments per year). Doesn't matter what I input, I can't get it to get the correct amounts.

Question: Why can't Quicken calculate this properly?

MichelR · Answer

Sooo... False alarm. It looks like the bank screwed up. Even though I had asked for accelerated biweekly, they set it to biweekly (not sure how I missed that). That explains the discrepancy. sigh... Sorry for the bother. Now I need to sort that out.

Still have to deal with the pain of getting Quicken to understand that I sold the other property, though.

MichelR · Answer

Yeah, I don't know. For my first two mortgages the payments were calculated properly. It's only the last two that have been acting up, but this one is way off.

Tom Young · Answer

Looking at the US Quicken version and assuming the Canadian Quicken version share the same "Loan Details" page, I wonder if the problem might not be an inconsistency between the Compounding period and the Payment schedule?  That is, I'd expect the Compounding period would be "Every other week", the same as the Payment schedule.Also the Loan Details page assumes that interest is paid in arrears, but maybe Canadian mortgages require interest in advance?