How to insert extra principal payment one time?

Ross Dillon

Seems our mortgage escrow decreased without my knowledge and my last mortgage payment was subsequently too much, so the lender applied the extra to principal reduction. I want to update my Quicken loan and can't figure out how. I went to the bank payment transaction and edited the splits (correcting the escrow values and applying the remainder to the same category (but a different line) as the principal). I expected the Loan balance to decrease accordingly but it did not. I tried to renter the incorrect payment but I can't seem to because Quicken insists on pre-entering the P&I from the loan calculations for the next payment. What's the RIGHT way to do this?

Ross Dillon

So based on others with a similar issue, I deleted the bank transaction with the incorrect principal, then I went into the loan and attempted to "repay" it with the correct escrow and the extra principal. I had to use today's date (because quicken won't allow a backdated loan payment), but I fixed that well enough. I then reset the next payment to the correct date. But the mortgage balance did not get fixed. Then I noticed that the Principal calculated for the next payment is way to low which is screwing up the next payment as well as jacking up the balance. Until this last payment Quicken followed the lender's numbers exactly. Now I'm afraid I've completely ruined it. PLEASE HELP ME FIX THIS before the next payment. Thanks!!!

NotACPA

Are you downloading from your lender into that mortgage acct in Q?

If so, then the ONLY transactions that can  post to that account are the downloads from the lender.

Ross Dillon

No. I have the loan toss out a reminder each month and the bank payment download will match to it. The loan was created by me with Quicken and has (until now) matched P&I perfectly. Now after deleting the 7/1/22 payment, the next Principal payment is way off. Shows the same in the payment schedule. I have no clue what has happened nor how to fix. Loans in Q have always been a flaky mystery to me.

Ross Dillon

Fixed after a call to Quicken although they didn't fix it, the4y just watched me struggle through a quicken bug until I found a workaround.
1) In the loan page I clicked on "Edit Payment Details
2) Form would auto-fill out the principal, but it would be off by 23.01 (The amount of the extra principal paid in July)
3) Enter transaction, then go to calendar to actually enter it into the bank register
4) Edit splits...the $23.01 that was extra principle was being miscategorized as Property tax. If I left it that way when I entered the transaction, I was screwed because fixing it after the fact would not update the loan balance properly. If I fixed it before I entered it (by zero-ing out that in-error property tax line and fixed the Mortgage (principal) line with the correct amount, the loan balance would be correct.
After doing this 4 times and conceding the Q Tech support dude there was a bug, he accidentally hung up on me.
I called back and got someone else. I kept clicking on different option in the loan window (Not changing any values) and suddenly the next payment was correctly filled out in the form. Weird, but not complaining. Quicken loans are finicky.

UKR

Redo the Splits in the transaction in your checking account and make the lines in the Split look like this:

Leave lines 1 and 2 unchanged.
If you don't have a line 3, add one with a transfer to the mortgage account for $23.01
In line 4 reduce the original escrow amount by $23.01

For as long as I had to pay a mortgage, my mortgage company would always refund escrow overages by check or recalculate future escrow withholdings for the next year by the amount of overage / 12. Simple to change the Split to the new escrow amount.

Ross Dillon

That did not work. Changing the splits after-the-fact did not correctly update the loan balance.

UKR

Ross Dillon said:

That did not work. Changing the splits after-the-fact did not correctly update the loan balance.

Please let me see what you've got in your checking account's Split transaction.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7867159/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-windows

Please save images to files of file type PNG, JPG, or GIF only. They're easier to work with than PDF files.

Ross Dillon

The first image ("with extra".png") shows the one time payment with the extra principal in the third line as you suggested. The bizarre thing is that that line has been in the splits for months but labeled "Home:Mortgage:Property Tax" with a value of zero. There has always been a duplicate of that line also in the splits with the correct value. To do what you suggested, I simply renamed that third line to match the first line (the primary principal payment) withs the extra amount. The Loan balance did not update. Hmmm.

So I deleted the register transaction and went into the loan account and selected "Edit Payment" to recreate it. Then I went to the calendar, entered the payment and...the extra payment was inserted into the third line, but was mislabeled "Home:Mortgage:Property Tax" (See second image "without extra.png"). I relabeled it as before with the same result (did not affect the loan balance). Hmmm.

So I deleted the register transaction (again) and went into the loan account and selected "Edit Payment" to recreate it (again). This time when I opened it from the calendar I looked at the splits and sure enough the extra principal was there on the third line, mislabeled as property tax, but this time I corrected that label before entering it into the register. That worked.

Then it got even more wonky. I went back to the loan page to enter another payment (as a test), but this time Quicken inserted in the principal spot a value that was short of the correct value by...weirdly enough" the exact amount of the extra principal from the previous payment. I could delete the extra principal, but the actual principal could not be edited. So I left it there and entered it. Like before I opened the pending payment in the calendar and selected splits. Sure enough, the third line was the extra principal, again mislabeled as property tax, and the first line (primary principal) was short by the same amount. So I zeroed out the property tax line (3) and added that amount into the primary principal line (1) and entered the transaction. Voila, the loan balance was correct. I did this for three more payments (Q text support request) and it worked the same each time. I had the Q folks convinced it was a bug. The second TS rep (first one was disconnected...yes I was very cranky) had me click on a few things within the loan page just to verify all the settings were correct, and when I went back to create a new payment...it suddenly began working correctly. Hmmm

Have I said that Quicken Loans are finicky? 2 hours of my life wasted...