Editing category for loan principal (Q Mac)

jcricket73

I'm trying to setup my mortgage to be tracked in Quicken (it's a bank where there's no automatic downloading).

When setting up the bill reminder, I see that you can edit the category for the interest on a loan (mortgage), but you can't edit the category for the principal (it's always tracked under "transfers:[account name]"). I prefer to use a category like Home:Mortgage Payment for the principal (along with the account in the transfer field) because then all my home related expenses show up nicely in reports. Is there any way to do this with the automated amortization loan tracking built into Quicken?

volvogirl

The principle part of the payment is not an expense. It reduces the loan balance. The expense was when you took out the loan. it is just moving the money from one pocket to another. Your net worth didn't change. But it is a cash flow item.

jacobs

As stated above, a transfer to your loan for the principal payment is not an expense. (You can include selected transfers in category reports or your budget if you want treat the transfer as if it's an expense.) But the key is to set up the loan correctly — and you can set the transfer category and the interest category.

Click the + icon atop the left sidebar, and click that you want to select an Offline Account at the bottom:

Own the first of two loans set-up screens, you can define which category to use for interest, as well as escrow or other components of your monthly payment, on the right sideClick where it defaults to Loans: Loan Interest by default if you wish to use a different interest expense category:

Then when you Continue to the second set-up screen, you can specify the account that the payment comes from, and to create a split transaction between principal (transfer to the loan account) and interest expense:

If you want help with including the transfer which is the principal payment in a report of expenses, post back and we can help you with that.