No Category for Memorized Mortgage Payment Interest Expense

beb

When I enter my mortgage payment each month, it enters a split transaction with some calculated amount going to reduce principal, some amount going to an escrow account, and some amount going to interest expense. However, when my payment is entered, there is no category entered in the split transaction for the interest expense. And I cannot find any place where I can assign the interest expense to the correct category.

Any thoughts?

UKR

Are you saying that, when you created the loan account in Quicken, the loan setup process (aka wizard) did not automatically add a category and subcategory called something like "Loan:Interest" or "Mortgage:Interest"?
Look through your (Tools Menu) Category List and see if you can find an existing one to use. Or create a category for "Loan" or "Mortgage" with a subcategory "Interest".

beb

That is correct. It properly created the split transaction with the exception that there is nothing in the category line for the interest amount. Since I created the loan, I have had to manually enter the interest category in the transaction each month. I know where to edit the split in the memorized transaction for items other than P & I, but is there somewhere I can edit the category for the interest expense?

UKR

If you use the Scheduled Reminder to record your monthly payment, you should be able to edit it, to fix the Interest category in the Split transaction detail for good.

Open the loan account register and click thru the sequence of selections below:

1. click Edit under MONTHLY PAYMENT
2. click Edit Loan Reminder
3. click on Split
4. click on the Split icon to (finally!) open the Split Transaction detail dialog.
5. in line 2 of the dialog set the correct Interest category.
6. click OK to save and continue clicking OK or Done on all the popup windows until you're back at the loan register view.

The next and all future monthly payments should now have the correct interest category.
Do note that the Split dialog must show the detail lines in the order

1. Principal
2. Interest
3. additional Principal or 0.00
4. transfer to escrow account or 0.00

Anything else in any other order will confuse the loan calculations.

beb

Again, thank you. I don't use the scheduled reminder, but instead, I have this memorized transaction as part of a scheduled group. So, I went to the reminders section and tried to add it to my Scheduled Reminders (which I have not used before) but I don't get the Edit Loan Reminder button in that dialogue box, only the Payment Options button is visible. Perhaps I have added the reminder incorrectly--not sure although it looks correct. I also tried restarting Quicken after making the change but the Edit Loan Reminder does not show up.

UKR

If you use a Memorized Transaction instead of the loan setup - generated reminder, you should be able to find and edit it in the (Tools Menu) Memorized Payee List. From there it's a similar process to access the Split dialog and make the change.

beb

Ok, I got this to work! I went to payment options (in the edit payment dialogue box) and changed the option from a Memorized Payee to a Scheduled Reminder transaction. That then gave me the ability to edit the split and it also removed the existing memorized transaction. I edited all the details of the split with all the correct categories and accounts and saved it. I then went back in and changed it back to being a memorized transaction (instead of a scheduled reminder) and it created a new memorized transaction with the split details as I had set up. So thank you for the help--in a roundabout way it got fixed. And I must say, despite the corporate name, this was less than intuitive. But this is my 30th year of using Quicken and it always seems there are multiple ways of getting something done.