Transfer funds in/out of HELOC, how???

FinleyD21224

When I setup my HELOC quicken automatically categorized it as a loan. Once it finished there seems to be no way to transfer money out of the HELOC into a banking account (which is the main function of a HELOC to draw down funds as needed). What am I doing wrong?

Rocket J Squirrel

A HELOC is better represented in Quicken as a Credit Card account. If you set up an offline HELOC, what Quicken actually creates is a Credit Card account. Both credit cards and HELOCs are lines of credit and money can be transferred in and out.

You cannot convert your existing Loan account to a Credit Card, so you will have to create a new account and delete the old one.

Boatnmaniac

@FinleyD21224 - It sounds like you had set up your HELOC as a connected loan so that data would be downloaded into the loan account in Quicken.  Something to keep in mind when setting up loans in the future:  Connected loans do not have account registers.  Because of this one cannot transfer funds to and from them from within Quicken.  Instead, you let the lender download changes to the balance into the loan.  Then when the bank downloads the transaction into the checking account you will need to categorize it, not set it up as a transfer.

Because of this, I believe most of the SuperUsers will recommend against setting up loans as connected accounts and instead set them up as manual accounts.  Manual loans will have an account register and that allows for funds transfer transactions to be set up between them and other accounts.

Rocket J Squirrel

Everything @Boatnmaniac says is true, but a line of credit is not a loan. So don't use a loan account for it.

Boatnmaniac

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Everything @Boatnmaniac says is true, but a line of credit is not a loan. So don't use a loan account for it.

I agree and had meant to say that, too.  Thanks for clarifying it.  My comments regarding loans was intended as FYI should @FinleyD21224 ever want to set up a loan account in the future.

FinleyD21224

Thanks for your rapid response. So that's what I will do, remove the account and manually add as a credit card. Thanks again!