how to i get a payment to a loan to show up as a expsense

Question

i have a loan set up in quicken from a family member. I pay every month it shows the outstanding balance and the reduction of loan every time i pay.  In my cash flow reports it does not show it as and an outflow?  how do i see it as an out flow on my cash flow report.  I can see it when i add transfers but it includes transfers to myself from other accounts and meses up true outflows

UKR · Answer

The only alternative that I can think of would be to NOT track the loan as a liability account in Quicken.

Set up only a Scheduled Reminder for the monthly payments, defined with [xx] occurrences, i.e., number of payments.

Categorize the reminder to an Expense category, e.g., "Loan to be paid back" … and now you have an expense you can add to your budget.

Jon · Answer

By default only the interest portion of a loan payment shows up on the Cash Flow report, since that's the only portion of the payment that is an expense (unless you change the settings to include transfers but as @Dallas11 points out that will pickup up all transfers).

One thing you could do is edit the report and on the Accounts tab exclude the loan account from the Cash Flow report, then go to the Advanced tab and select the "Include selected transfers with accounts outside of report and check the Transfer box below it. If you do that, then the principal portion of the loan payments will show up under the category "TO (name of loan account)".

NotACPA · Answer

A loan payment is NOT an expense.  The expense was when you took out the loan and paid for whatever.

It the loan payment was an expense, you'd be double-counting that expense.

What you need to be looking at is a Cash Flow report, which Q also has.