How to add a Home Equity Loan (not HELOC)

Question

I just got a home equity loan and am trying to add it into quicken.

The loan proceeds were deposited today into my existing credit union's savings account, and that transaction was already downloaded correctly.

However the actual loan was downloaded as a debit to my checking account, when in fact, my bank lists it as a loan on their website and NOT a debit to my checking account.

When I try to Add Account, select my credit union, and search for the new loan account, the search was unsuccessful.   There was a checkbox at the end of the error message asking if this is a Home Equity Loan, and when I checked it, I was sent back to the Add Account prompt and met the same problem.

Can you give explicit instructions on how to add a Home Equity Loan (an not a HELOC)?

Tom Young · Accepted Answer

It may be the case that the information/transactions associated with the "loan" aspect of the transaction isn't information you can download from your credit union.   Not all loans made by all Financial Institutions allow for downloading into Quicken and that might be the case here.  You should ask your credit union if that in fact is the case here.

I'd suggest simply setting up a manual loan Account in Quicken and editing the deposit into the Savings Account such that the "other side" of the entry is properly lodged in that new liability Account.

As far as I understand it a Home Equity Loan that isn't a HELOC is simply a 2nd mortgage with a normal amortization schedule based on a fixed rate and term.  When you create the manual loan Account in Quicken Quicken's "loan wizard" will ask for all that information - date of origin, length of term, interest rate, and so forth.  As a part of this process Quicken will create an Opening Balance entry on the date of origin for the amount of the loan in the loan Account.  After the Account is created simply delete that Opening Balance entry made by Quicken and substitute the loan amount by editing that Savings Account entry to direct the loan balance to the newly created loan Account.

Frankx · Accepted Answer

Hi @clufster,

It is very possible that your credit union does not allow for downloading transactions for loan accounts (many credit unions only allow downloads for savings-type accounts and credit cards, but not loans).

Here are the steps you need to take (in the following order):

* Add a new account for the Home Equity Loan.  First click on "Tools" > then "Add Account";* Next - enter the name of the financial institution that gave you the loan > then follow the prompts to setup the new account. This is assuming that the Loan will be a "connected account" (i.e. one that you can download transactions from the loan provider). 
* If the financial institution is not one that allows for connected loan accounts, you'll need to click on the "Offline Account" tab at the bottom of the "Search for your Financial Institution" and follow the instructions on setting up an offline account.

* Once the new account is setup, you'll need to "fix" the transaction that you describe above that - "… was downloaded as a debit to my checking account…"  The fix is a simple one - simply edit the downloaded transaction to change the "Category" from whatever is there now, to the name of the new account setup in step #1 (above) in brackets.  So if the name in Quicken of the new loan account is "ABC Credit Union Home Equity Loan" - you should enter [ABC Credit Union Home Equity Loan] in the Category field.

Let mw know if you have any followups.

Frankx