Mortgage loan principal and interest

PGBM

Hi, I am a new quicken user. I set up an account for my mortgage by connecting to my mortgage bank. Quicken downloaded all the transactions and the final balance is correct. However, the transactions include interest payments, principal payments, escrow payments, and small paydown payments because I once made an extra payment. Quicken doesn't seem to distinguish between these payments and when I look at the historical balances every transaction increases the historical balance, while only the principal payments should. How do I configure this properly? Thanks!

Boatnmaniac

Connected loans do not do what you want them to do. They do not have loan account registers and they do not provide for any principal/interest amortization and other costs breakouts. They simply download/update the loan balance. And in the payment account there will be downloaded a totally separate transaction with no split categories details.

To do what you want it to do you will need to deactivate the mortgage account so downloads from the lender no longer occur. Then edit the mortgage account to include the breakouts you want/need and allow the program to set up a Loan Reminder. The Loan Reminder will then be linked to the mortgage account and will adjust the principal/interest amortization each month that a payment is made. And it will also enter a debit transcation into the payment account register for the full amount of each payment (with split categories for the amortization and other costs). Then when the payment transaction is downloaded from your bank it will be matched to the Loan Reminder debit transaction that was entered.

Changing this from a connected loan to a manual loan will not correct/update previously downloaded payments from your bank. You will need to manually edit those transactions to enter the split categories that you want/need. But it will help with future mortgage payments.

Once it is a manual loan there will be a mortgage account register and you will be able to see and edit transactions there.

Regarding Quicken's amortization calculations: It is not perfect but it is pretty good. Each month the amount of the payment that gets allocated to principal and interest will be adjusted when the Load Reminder gets entered.

When the process converting from a connected loan to a manual loan is done, all of the payment breakout details will also then show up correctly in various Quicken reports such sa the Itemized Categories report.

I and most other SuperUsers and long-time Quicken users prefer more detail and ability to edit and link between Quicken accounts rather than less so we will generally recommend going the manual loan route. But it is a personal choice as to which path to take.

There is more information available along with setup instructions in Help > Quicken Help > search for "How do I set up a loan?"

I hope this answered your question.