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

Question

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 · Accepted Answer

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 · Accepted Answer

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 · Accepted Answer

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:

* Back up your data file before proceeding.
* Payment Details:  Remove the $445.24 from the Extra Principal field.
* Click on Edit Loan Reminder.
* 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). 
* Line 6 of the Reminder:  Enter Home:Property Tax for the category and enter $445.24 for the dollar amount of that line.
* If the Split Total and the Transaction Total equal each other, click on OK.
* 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.)