Why is my property tax line item being classified as an extra principal payment?

sneff30

Hello, I'm new to Quicken Classic Windows (Ver. R53.32, Build 27.1.53.32) and I'm having an issue getting my offline mortgage loan payment to split and categorize correctly.

In my budget I am only tracking the total payment to my loan servicer, but in the offline loan account I have the payment details split into the principal, interest, property tax, home insurance, and PMI. This split is reflected correctly except for the property tax, which Quicken keeps changing to be recorded as additional principal. Below is a screenshot of the loan reminder split and the resulting erroneous change by Quicken.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

Bill Reminder Splits.jpg

Incorrect Loan Payment Details.jpg

volvogirl

I think I remember that the 3rd line of split is special. Try making the 3rd line for extra principal with zero and move property tax down.

volvogirl

Yep, found a post. See this thread for how to categorize split lines in a Mortgage

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/19991663#Comment_19991663

Boatnmaniac

Quicken reserves the 3rd line of the split for recording the extra principal that is paid. But your splits picture show that you property tax is entered there. That should not be. Did you change the category from the name of the mortgage account enclosed in brackets and replace it with Home:Property Tax? If so, that is the cause of the issue you are seeing because even though you changed the category name to Home:Property Tax Quicken still thinks it is extra principal that is being paid.

Instead, what should be shown in the split of the Reminder:

1. Back up your data file before proceeding.
2. Payment Details: Remove the $445.24 from the Extra Principal field.
3. Click on Edit Loan Reminder.
4. Line 3 of the Reminder: Change the category to the name of your mortgage account enclosed in brackets (just like it is in Line 1). Make sure the dollar amount is $0 (or if there is extra principal to be paid, enter the amount of the extra principal in this line).
5. Line 6 of the Reminder: Enter Home:Property Tax for the category and enter $445.24 for the dollar amount of that line.
6. If the Split Total and the Transaction Total equal each other, click on OK.
7. If the Split Total and the Transaction Total do not equal each other, find out what is causing the discrepancy and correct it. Often (not always) this can be easily corrected by clicking on Adjust and then clicking on OK. (Note: Clicking on Adjust will change the total amount of the Reminder so that it matches the total of all of the categories in the split.)

Your Reminder should now be fixed.

If you have already entered a Reminder into your checking and mortgage account, you can manually edit the transaction in your checking account to make the changes to Line 3 and Line 6 of the category split as mentioned above.

Does this resolve the issue?

(Edit: Oops! I didn't see @volvogirl's response before I posted. Good to see that we are saying the same thing. I'll keep my post in this thread since it provides additional detail regarding what changes to make to the category splits.)

volvogirl

I think I remember that the 3rd line of split is special. Try making the 3rd line for extra principal with zero and move property tax down.

volvogirl

Yep, found a post. See this thread for how to categorize split lines in a Mortgage

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/19991663#Comment_19991663

Boatnmaniac

Quicken reserves the 3rd line of the split for recording the extra principal that is paid. But your splits picture show that you property tax is entered there. That should not be. Did you change the category from the name of the mortgage account enclosed in brackets and replace it with Home:Property Tax? If so, that is the cause of the issue you are seeing because even though you changed the category name to Home:Property Tax Quicken still thinks it is extra principal that is being paid.

Instead, what should be shown in the split of the Reminder:

1. Back up your data file before proceeding.
2. Payment Details: Remove the $445.24 from the Extra Principal field.
3. Click on Edit Loan Reminder.
4. Line 3 of the Reminder: Change the category to the name of your mortgage account enclosed in brackets (just like it is in Line 1). Make sure the dollar amount is $0 (or if there is extra principal to be paid, enter the amount of the extra principal in this line).
5. Line 6 of the Reminder: Enter Home:Property Tax for the category and enter $445.24 for the dollar amount of that line.
6. If the Split Total and the Transaction Total equal each other, click on OK.
7. If the Split Total and the Transaction Total do not equal each other, find out what is causing the discrepancy and correct it. Often (not always) this can be easily corrected by clicking on Adjust and then clicking on OK. (Note: Clicking on Adjust will change the total amount of the Reminder so that it matches the total of all of the categories in the split.)

Your Reminder should now be fixed.

If you have already entered a Reminder into your checking and mortgage account, you can manually edit the transaction in your checking account to make the changes to Line 3 and Line 6 of the category split as mentioned above.

Does this resolve the issue?

(Edit: Oops! I didn't see @volvogirl's response before I posted. Good to see that we are saying the same thing. I'll keep my post in this thread since it provides additional detail regarding what changes to make to the category splits.)

NotACPA

Actually that 3rd line rule/quirk no longer appears to be the case.

This records properly for me.

The reason why the OP's $445.24 is going to Mortgage prin is because it was setup that way. See the OP's 2nd graphic.

The $445.24 should be part of the "Other" line.

sneff30

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20407026#Comment_20407026

So I input the entire amount into "Other" and Quicken was re-categorizing it as additional principal.

Adding the 3rd line $0.00 fixed my issue.

Boatnmaniac

@NotACPA - Changing the categories in the split (both Reminder and Other) can be done and they look correct in the splits.

But overwrite Line 3 in the Reminder split with a different category or delete Line 3 from the split and things start to go weird. In my testing, deleting Line 3 of the Reminder split:

1. Deletes some of the Other split lines.
2. The Extra Principal field will now show the dollar amount of the total of all of the Other split lines that were deleted.
3. Reopening the Reminder split will still show the deleted Other split lines even though they no longer show up in the Other split. One of the deleted Other split lines (both category and $) will become Line 3 in the Reminder split.
4. Enter the Reminder and the Line 3 category dollar amount will show up as extra principal paid, regardless of what category is actually entered there.

Just an ugly thing all the way around. Just leave Line 3 of the Reminder split for Extra Principal intact and everything then seems to work out OK.

It's been like this for as long as I can remember.