Missing mortgage payment

Ross Dillon

I have my mortgage set up to auto-enter payments each month. They are actually paid directly from my bank so the downloaded transactions match up to the previously-entered mortgage entry.

...Except my January payment is missing. The transaction downloaded but the normal splits are not there. The February payment is in the register with the wrong date, so the downloaded transaction didn't match. I fixed that, but I can't figure out how to add the missing January transaction. It not in the mortgage payment history and not in the calendar. I suspect my wife (who does most of the day to day work) inadvertently deleted it. Question is, how do I get it back in there? Can I just add a payment transaction with the appropriate splits (i.e. will they connect back to the mortgage and update the interest/principal etc...)? My experience with loan accounts in Q is that they are extremely finicky and most attempts to fix screwups just make it worse.

Thanks

BKHobb

That is my experience too — making loan changes or fixes in Quicken often makes things worse. That said, I've had a recent experience that may be helpful.

Start by comparing the splits in the Quicken Feb mortgage transaction to the splits the mortgage company lists for your Feb payment. Are they the same, or are the Quicken transaction splits for Feb what they should have been for January?

I had something like your situation with my scheduled January mortgage payment. I too use Quicken to calculate the principal-interest split for the scheduled mortgage payment transaction. Quicken has been right to the penny for years when I compare its split calculation to the statements from my mortgage company. However, for some unknown reason, my Quicken-calculated January 2023 scheduled mortgage payment didn't split the payment to principal, interest, and escrow like it has successfully done for years. It showed the payment as one big uncategorized amount. I didn't catch the error until two months later after I'd already approved entering the scheduled February and March Quicken-calculated mortgage transactions.

However, I noticed that those subsequent Quicken-calculated mortgage transactions did have proper splits to principle, interest, and escrow. Oddly, the split amounts in the February transaction were what the splits should have been for that uncategorized January transaction, and the splits for March were what should have been the splits for February. Then I looked at the coming Quicken-calculated mortgage transaction scheduled for April, and it shows the proper principal and interest calculations for the March payment. Basically, it appeared that Quicken had skipped that uncategorized January mortgage transaction for purposes of calculating principle and interest in subsequent payments. From one perspective, it appeared that the thing that was off in the recorded February and March transactions was only the dates of the transactions.

I didn't want to delete any of the recorded transactions because my experience is that doing so throws off Quicken's calculations for all subsequent loan transactions.

Before trying any fix, I performed a full backup of my Quicken database just in case any changes really screwed things up and I needed to recover. Then I did the following:

- I changed the amount of the incorrect, uncategorized January mortgage transaction to zero so my checking account balance would be accurate.

- I changed the dates of the recorded Feb. 1 mortgage transaction to January 1 and the March 1 mortgage payment transaction to Feb. 1 because the splits were correct for those months' payments.

- I went to scheduled payments and changed the due date on next scheduled mortgage transaction from April 1 to March 1 and entered that March 1 scheduled payment.

The result: After making those changes, I crossed checked all the splits and balances against what the mortgage company reports as correct. At this point the recorded splits for Jan., Feb. and March are correct, the calculated principal and interest in the scheduled, Quicken-calculated April payment are correct, and the current principle-due balance is correct to the penny. As best I can tell, the changes got everything back in sync. They seem to have worked. I closed Quicken and later reopened it and everything still looks good. Hope this helps.