How's to stop erroneous adjustments?

Question

I have an auto loan I'm tracking in Quicken. The loan institution supports Quicken Connect syncing. I have the loan start w/ Opening Balance and all principal payments.

To handle Interest portion of payments, I have a Cash Holding account. So the flow is:

Checking —> Holding —[principal]—> Loan Account

As mentioned, it's 100% accurate with the online payments rolling balance, etc. from opening to today.

Every time I sync, Quicken enters in An Adjustment that is equal to the total of the current rolling balance, but positive. Effectively zeroing out the loan balance.

While that would be amazing, it is not accurate. I've tried deleting this adjustment, but it just enters it again on the next sync.

What could be going on here?

jkyle · Answer

I was doing it with splits, but the benefit of the intermediate is clarity when running reports or monthly expenditures.

With the holding, I can just exclude the lability and holding accounts, but continue to track transfers out from the checking and I get a clean total on what I spent for the Car Loan through transfer deposits to the holding.

When you split it shows up as Loan Interest or a separate Auto Loan interest if you get that granular. Or you have to create tags to aggregate by. Etc.

The holding account felt "cleaner" with less micromanaging of transaction categories and tags. . . . and I still get the Loan Interest aggregation if I want by including the holding transactions.

UKR · Answer

I second @Jon 's reply re: taking the account offline and maintaining its balance manually.

The transaction in your checking account, to make the monthly payment, should consist of 2 Splits

- the principal payment amount, as transfer to the offline loan account

- the interest paid, as expense to a Loan:Interest (or similar) category

Doing it this way, an intermediate Holding account is not necessary

Maria52Girgis · Answer

I am having this same issue with my Fidelity accounts which is most annoying.