How do I create an expense for a "downloadable" cash loan?

ElPope

I created a new student loan just now, in "download" mode. It connected to the financial institution and set up the loan with a balance.

This loan is basically "income" (cash) that I need to offset with an "expense" (i.e., tuition). How do I do that, seeing as there is no ledger? How do I track that expense? Right now it's a hanging liability.

NotACPA

In Q, when you set up a loan for download, ONLY the downloaded transactions can be recorded in that account ... which I consider to be a bad decision by Q, but that's what it is.

You need to turn off downloads, and you'll get back the Loan register where you can manually (or via scheduled transaction) input the income (which would make the balance more negative) and the tuition expense (which would make the balance less negative).

Do you, at some point, need to repay this loan?  If so, my above advice needs to be changed.

ElPope

Still waiting to hear from a Quicken rep about this.

Quicken Jared

ElPope said:

Still waiting to hear from a Quicken rep about this.

Hello @ElPope,   

We are sorry that you are experiencing problems loan expenses. Thank you for speaking with us about this here on the Quicken Community.

First, have you made use of the instructions in @NotACPA's previous comment? If not, is it in relation to repayment?

We look forward to hearing back from you about this. 

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

ElPope

No, I have not done that yet, because the loan has not been fully funded (the balance is being increased in tranches, because the loan covers previous semesters which I've already paid for. That's what makes this even more complicated - I'm getting some of the loan in cash to my checking account, and the school is keeping the rest. The school isn't processing all the previous semesters at once). I have no way of recording these transactions unless I take the loan offline and enter them manually. In my world (the world of designing and building business solutions, which is similar to your world, Jared) this is known as a "workaround". I don't want to have to continually employ "workarounds" to use this product. Thanks.