How to link transactions as payments to offline accounts?

Question

I have a mortgage which I added to Quicken as an offline account. My mortgage payment is now listed as a transaction but I can’t find a way to make it show up as a payment in my mortgage account. When I create a new transaction in my mortgage account it shows up in my budget as having paid two mortgages. Any way to fix this?

Tom Young · Answer

This is a Windows user answering here but I'm assuming that as an accounting program Quicken works the same in both Windows and Mac, i.e., "double entry accounting."

You say "My mortgage payment is now listed as a transaction" (presumably in your checking Account?) but that it's not affecting the balance of your mortgage.  "Offline" shouldn't have anything to do with your problem, it would seem that that transaction you're referring to (in your checking Account?) isn't correct.

In the very simplest case of having the mortgage payment consist only of principal and interest, then the payment in your checking Account should be split into two parts:

* Some amount of interest expense posted to a Category, and
* The balance of the payment posted to the Mortgage Loan Account, a "transfer."

Does you transaction look like this?  The second piece here - the principal portion - should be pointed to the Account, it can't be some sort of Category (expense) like "Mortgage Loan Principal."

volvogirl · Answer

What is the category on the payment in your checking account?  It should be a Transfer to the Mortgage account.  You enter a transfer by entering the Mortgage acct in the category field in square brackets like [Mortgage].  But you will probably need to split the payment into principal, interest, escrow, property tax etc.   You shouldn't be entering it directly in the mortgage account, just in the checking account.