Soliciting Suggestions to Set up Zero-Interest Term Financing Acct

lothian

I need suggestions to consider on setting up zero-interest account(s) in Quicken. Frankly, I'm surprised this common finance entity doesn't exist within the New Account menu, yet seemingly it does not.

Zero-interest Term Financing is essentially a loan, so I intuitively made a loan account in Quicken for each instance. But this seems inelegant, particularly in instances where I'm taking advantage of one of my credit card offers' for zero interest term financing where I have populated ledger in Quicken for each.

Suggestions? Recommendations?

CaliQkn

@lothian I think you can simply set up a manual credit card or liability account. Setting up a loan would be over-kill in my opinion. Since there is no interest component, it should be pretty simple. The monthly principal should be the same each month. I have done this when I have purchased a cell phone through my phone plan.

If you set up a CC account and want the account to show as a liability in the account list, just change the Account Intent to "Liability".

lothian

Agreed… it's overkill. And I'm probably overthinking this.

I suppose I expected the developers to include some mechanism within the CC account object to track ZIF loans as a separate entity within the same the CC account object.

Another example along these lines: cash advance.
CC's offer cash advances though typ w/ an APR different than the purchases account. Similar to above, I suppose I expect there to be some method within Quicken to track this entity separately, though within the same the CC account object.

CaliQkn

@lothian set up a Cash Advance account as a manual credit card. These type accounts don't have an amortization schedule, so the features you describe is not necessary. The payments are advanced when needed and then paid back automatically.

If you really mean ZIF loans, have a very limited use. I would say that the typical Quicken user would never need the use for one. Nevertheless, any zero interest loan would not require interest calculations, so a CC account should work. If you need to document terms, you could use the comments, or notes.

NotACPA

@lothian, Rather than thinking of it as a loan, which is where I think you're going astray, just think of it as an extended payment plan.

In Q, a loan has some sort of amortization. Your account doesn't. So a manual card account would work well.