Adj. Mortgage balance in quicken for windows

Question

I have tried to utilize the Mortgage feature in quicken for windows. I have even able to link it to my bank that holds the Mortgage. when II try to update it, it shows that it is connecting and then updating. Still in quicken the balance dose not match what the bank shows. It is off by about $8K. I have not been able to figure out how I adjust this balance to that the match. Can anyone help me with this.

Tom Young · Answer

Well, Quicken is always trying to add bells and whistles to its product to entice more customers to buy its product, but some bells and whistles are more valuable then others and/or work better than others.   So I, probably like most users, choose to use some and of Quicken options, but not all.

Despite what Quicken implies in its marketing statements, it's really not possible to have Quicken "do your accounting for you" and have screaming accuracy be the end result.  I expect you understand that and so you, as the "Chief Accounting Officer" of your enterprise (most like you or your family's finances) probably reconcile your bank and credit card account periodically, and there's no reason not to take the same approach to a Mortgage Loan.

Quicken will do an excellent job of posting the correct monthly payments with the correct amounts into your checking Account (if you set up a Reminder to do so) and those payments, when they clear the bank, will be found and Matched when the check clears your bank, ensuring accuracy with respect to the gross amount paid.  The loan Account (and maybe an escrow Account if you pay escrow and create an Account for that) will reflect that payment at the time the entry is posted in the checking Account.

Since mortgage loans typically only have one transaction a month the monthly "reconciliation" of the loan Account (and maybe the escrow Account) should only take seconds as you confirm that the Quicken balances are the same as what the lender is showing.

LTDan · Answer

Thanks I will try to disconnect from the bank. I would have like to utilize that feature science we  did pay for it but I also believe the path of least resistance and accuracy. I am trying to add a Mortgage loan that I have been paying on for 8 years already so perhaps just a manual Loan would do for me? would you agree?

Tom Young · Answer

With a "connected" (downloading) loan Account you don't have a loan register that you can open and enter an adjustment.  The concept is that you're getting the correct current balance from the lender and there's no reason or need to adjust anything.

Presumably (I say "presumably" as I've never had a connected loan Account in Quicken) you can go to the Online Services tab of the Account's "Account Details Screen" and Deactivate downloading.  That allows you access to the loan register, so you might try doing that, making your adjustment, and the reactivate the Account for downloading.  Maybe that will work, maybe it won't.

As I see it there's really no benefit and lots of downsides to having a "connected" mortgage loan in the first place.  Posts like yours where there's no agreement between what Quicken is showing as the loan's balance and what the lender is showing (including instances where the loan is stated in Quicken to be "paid off", when it's not) are not infrequent in this forum.

With an normal, amortizing, mortgage loan all the "action" comes right out of your checking Account: you control the timing of the payment, the amortization schedule produced by Quicken easily splits the payment between principal, interest and any escrow, and all of that will be reflected a day or two later when the lender processes the payment.  In contrast, with a connected loan the only information sent to Quicken is the loan balance, which should be correct, but frequently isn't just because the process of harvesting that information for Quicken's use is frequently unreliable.