How to view loan register

dlrowell

It's fine to see all that useful information that Quicken displays by default, but I want to see an account register---each loan payment, with the date and the running balance. Is this not possible?

Boatnmaniac

It is similar to what was done with investments accounts.  Some people want a Simple view while others what a Complete view.

Setting up a loan to be connected to the lender provides a Simple view of the loan...no register, no transaction details...very similar to what is presented with Simple Investing.

If you want the Complete view of the loan you will need to disconnect it from the lender.  You will no longer get account information downloaded from the lender but will instead have a manual loan and will be able to see the loan register with payments info, running balance, amortization schedule, etc. 

Manual loans will set up a Loan Reminder that you can then enter each month (or payment period) into the Loan register.  The Loan Reminder will be a transfer from the checking account and has a split category for principal, interest, etc.  The amounts of the principal and interest will be automatically adjusted when the Loan Reminder is entered based upon the date of the transaction.  Then when the loan payment transaction is downloaded from your bank it is or can be matched to the Loan Reminder that was entered into the register.  And it provides a direct link from your checking account register to the loan, something that does not exist with a connected Loan.

I and many of the other superusers generally recommend setting up loans as manual accounts instead of connected accounts.  But the choice is up to the user and what they want.  Since you want to see all that detail, I suggest you disconnect your loan from the lender.  Perhaps you will find this to be of help: FAQ: How do I convert a loan account that automatically downloads transactions, to a manual entry/sc.

What some do instead of trying to convert their loan, especially if the loan is relatively new with little history in Quicken, is to delete the loan and then set up a new manual loan account.  Again, it is a matter of choice.

splasher

If you have set the loan up for downloading, there is NOTHING to see, that is the way it was designed.

dlrowell

Well, if that's so, it's pretty lousy; So when I make a loan payment using a checking account, I see the outgoing payment in the checking register, but I can't see the incoming loan payment in the loan register? And that's by design? What idiot made that design choice?

Boatnmaniac

It is similar to what was done with investments accounts.  Some people want a Simple view while others what a Complete view.

Setting up a loan to be connected to the lender provides a Simple view of the loan...no register, no transaction details...very similar to what is presented with Simple Investing.

If you want the Complete view of the loan you will need to disconnect it from the lender.  You will no longer get account information downloaded from the lender but will instead have a manual loan and will be able to see the loan register with payments info, running balance, amortization schedule, etc. 

Manual loans will set up a Loan Reminder that you can then enter each month (or payment period) into the Loan register.  The Loan Reminder will be a transfer from the checking account and has a split category for principal, interest, etc.  The amounts of the principal and interest will be automatically adjusted when the Loan Reminder is entered based upon the date of the transaction.  Then when the loan payment transaction is downloaded from your bank it is or can be matched to the Loan Reminder that was entered into the register.  And it provides a direct link from your checking account register to the loan, something that does not exist with a connected Loan.

I and many of the other superusers generally recommend setting up loans as manual accounts instead of connected accounts.  But the choice is up to the user and what they want.  Since you want to see all that detail, I suggest you disconnect your loan from the lender.  Perhaps you will find this to be of help: FAQ: How do I convert a loan account that automatically downloads transactions, to a manual entry/sc.

What some do instead of trying to convert their loan, especially if the loan is relatively new with little history in Quicken, is to delete the loan and then set up a new manual loan account.  Again, it is a matter of choice.

GeoDosch

This is absurd!

I just set-up an account for a new Car Loan, and as usual when setting up an account, Quicken defaults to a Connected Account.  I set all that up, but couldn't figure out why the register wasn't visible, and didn't understand until I found this post.

First, repeatedly saying "This is a choice" falls flat when I was never TOLD I was making a choice.  I didn't get a message saying "If you link this account, you won't have a register-- just a screen showing what you owed and what you paid.

I have registers for my banking and credit card accounts, and they are also linked to the online account.  So what was the reasoning behind forcing us to choose between having detail (which, incidentally, is pretty much the main reason I use Quicken) and having it linked so I have confirmation that my balance matches what the bank thinks it should be.

It's as if I went to a restaurant, and after sitting down the waiter asks if I want a drink, and I order one.  Then I try to order food, but am told "Oh, we're sorry.  You can only have food or drink, not both."  Not only would that be an idiotic policy, but why didn't the waiter tell me that before getting my drink?

So now I'll go back, create a manual account, delete the linked one I just set up, and transfer my payment to the manual account.  Sheesh.

Boatnmaniac

@GeoDosch - I don't know anything about why Quicken set up the Loan accounts logic they way they did but I, too, have often wondered about that and why there isn't more information provided by Quicken on the loan set up process and options and pros/cons of each.  Nor do I understand why Loan accounts can't be simply set up like Credit Card accounts...it certainly would be nice if Loan accounts could be set up like that.

What I should have also mentioned in my previous post is that a big advantage of having a connected loan is the loan balance information will always be accurate.  While the balance of manual loans will not be 100% correct it will be pretty close because Quicken does a pretty good job of calculating the amortization schedule.  When the balance of a manual loan does need to be adjusted it is pretty easy to do and once that is done Quicken will then recalculate the forward looking amortization schedule accordingly.

GeoDosch

Boatnmaniac, yes, you perfectly made the case of why it should be possible to have a register AND a connected account.  For the account I just created, I only took the loan because there was a manufacturer's $$$ discount on the car, but only if you financed it.  So the salesman said take the loan, and pay it off in 90 days (the minimum time it needed to be open) so I'd get the discount, and pay little interest.  Since I'm going to be making a few lump payments to the principle, I especially need to track just what activity there was.  But it would be very nice to have the online updates automatically confirm that my records match the bank's.

Sherlock

The support of online activation for loans dates back to Quicken 2013.  Here's Quicken Support's explanation from 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160712160516/http://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-frequently-asked-loan-questions

Chris_QPW

When people asked for loan accounts to be downloaded pretty much everyone thought they would implement it by using the loan wizard and just downloading the net amount which would be matched to what the loan wizard's transaction put in.  They didn't.

Besides downloading there was another problem with loan accounts that kept plaguing Quicken, and that is unusual loan schedules.  Financial institutions can create some very strange payment schedules, and in some cases ones that would be impossible for Quicken to calculate like daily interest loans (lots of car loans are this way).  Quicken can't calculate the daily interest loans because it doesn't know the day that your payment will be credited.

So, people were asking the developers to put in lots of different types of loan types/schedules.

This prompted the developers to attack the problem in a different way.  Instead of Quicken calculating what the next payment would be, they download it from the financial institution.  And they "just believe" whatever the financial institution sends.

This pushes them into another corner.  If you are "believing whatever the financial institutions says", and you let the user go into the register and change things, how do you "reconcile" when things aren't right?

And that is the answer of why they block the user from accessing the register.  They don't trust the user not to mess up the account.  And they don't have a good way to fix it, if it is messed up.

The register really does still exist, they have just made sure you can't touch it.