Why does Quicken not update my mortgage balance?

Susan Westman

When I perform an update on my Wells Fargo mortgage account Quicken response with completed with 0 downloads. This has been happening for almost a year. My balance does not reflect the monthly payments being made.

NotACPA

1. Which Q product are you running? 
2. What BUILD of that product (found at HELP, About Quicken).
3. Have you recently changed Q products?
4. When you're recording your mortgage payments, what are the SPLITS in that transaction (I don't need the amounts, only the values in the CATEGORY column of the split window).
5. Lastly, when you do TOOLS, Account List, what's in the "Financial Institution" column across from your mortgage account?

Susan Westman

1. Running Q Deluxe Version R44.28
2. Build: 27.1.44.28
3. I have not changed product
4. Splits: Home:Mortgage:Principal
Home: Mortgage: Interest
Home: Mortgage: Property Tax
Home: Mortgage: Insurance
5. I don't show and "Financial Institution" column only "Transaction Download" column which shows Yes (Express Web Connect). The last successful update was done on 12/7/21. Since then, the Mortgage (liability) account shows the last download of today with no download transactions.

NotACPA

That "Home Mortgage:Principal" item should be enclosed in square brackets ... to indicate that it's a transfer to your loan account.  You've got it set as a category rather than a transfer.

Home Mortgage:Interest is properly a category, as you've indicated.

Home Mortgage;Property Tax is customarily a transfer (using the square brackets) to an Escrow account.  It's unlikely that you're paying tax to the government each month.  Rather you're depositing it into Escrow until the annual payment.

Same for Insurance.  For both of these, record the payment to an expense category when they actually happen (when payment is made to the gov't and insurer).

To display the Financial Institution column,  first click the OPTIONS button at the bottom of the dialog and select "Show Financial Institution".  So, which FI?

Also, at HELP, About Quicken, what's your "Membership Valid Thru" date, and can you download from other banks/cards/etc.

Lastly, downloading into a mortgage is ill advised, because ONLY the principal payment will download (not interest tax, etc) AND you'll lose all ability that you'd otherwise have to manage the account ... you won't even be able to view the mortgage account register.

Tom Young

NotACPA said:

That "Home Mortgage:Principal" item should be enclosed in square brackets ... to indicate that it's a transfer to your loan account.  You've got it set as a category rather than a transfer.

To me, the fact that the mortgage principal portion of the payment is being charged to a Category (a current expense) rather than to an Account (a transfer) is pretty much proof positive that you have set the mortgage Account up as a connected, downloading Account and should be getting updates to the principal balance. 

The way downloading loans work is that when the lender has processed your payment the reduction in principal is recorded in the mortgage Account as a "one-sided", "self-referential" entry that reduces your liability without affecting any other Account or Category in your file.  The effect of this, accounting-wise, is that you liability is reduced and your Net Worth is increased, "magically."  It's a trick.

To offset this piece of wizardry, Quicken pulls an offsetting trick with the recording of the principal payment in your checking Account.  Instead of recording the principal as a transfer, it records it a Category, a current expense that reduces you Net Worth in the same amount, offsetting the magic over in the loan Account.

Of course you typically make your payment entry in the checking Account before the lender processes the payment and pushes the change down to the loan Account, so in the window of time between the check entry and the update of the loan balance your current expense and your net worth are misstated.

It's my impression, based on posts in here, that downloading loans have lots of problems and frequently provide wrong information.  Your problem is that the loan isn't being updated, others have reported problems in that the loan amount is being updated with bad information, even being reported as "paid off" when it's clear that it's not.  It's my guess that the problems arise because the connection between the lender and Quicken is Express Web Connect, a notoriously problem-prone connection.

While it would be nice to be able to understand why your loan isn't being updated, you might end up having to deal with Official Quicken Support to get this ironed out. 

The other approach could be to convert this loan back to a manual Account, go back through your principal payments in the checking Account and change the Category used to a Transfer, and once you have things properly set up, continue on letting the checking Account entries update the loan Account.

NotACPA

@Tom Young   I considered that the loan was already established for  download, but the OP's comment about the balance  made me reconsider that.

At best, the OP's post is confusing.

Susan Westman

Thank you for all your assistance. My membership is valid through 3/28/23. I can download from all other banks and cards.

Susan Westman

Thank you both for your feedback. I can’t explain why when I set this loan up initially from scratch with Q setting up the categories automatically that the principal loan balance was updating properly for several months. After about 3-4 months the updates just stopped. I’ll try changing the principal to a transfer and see what happens. Again thank you both.