mortgage account
Paul
via web
I put all the correct information about our mortgage into moneydance. But it doesn't separate the interest from the principal on the account when I make a payment. So it always puts the full amount of my mortgage payment (interest & principal) to the remaining principal of my mortgage. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks for your help
2 Posted by John Selden on 27 May, 2009 07:12 PM
Hmm, Moneydance definitely knows how to treat principal and interest separately, so I'm guessing that you may have set it up incorrectly.
(1) Did you set up your mortgage as a loan account? if so, would you be wiling to put up a screenshot of how you set it up? Just go into the mortgage account then select Account > Edit Account from the menu. Feel free to change the numbers to protect the innocent!
(2) You said Moneydance doesn't separate interest from principal "when I make a payment." How are you entering the payment into Moneydance? Did you set up a reminder when you created the mortgage account? This is the best way to do it and will ensure that interest and principal are handled properly. After the reminder is created, you can have the payment entered automatically, or manually enter the payment by clicking on "Upcoming Items" in the Reminders gadget on the home screen.
Support Staff 3 Posted by Ben Spencer on 29 May, 2009 02:25 PM
Hi Paul
I want to echo what John has said with regard to posting more details about how the mortgage has been set up.
My best guess is that the split categories were not set up correctly when you created the loan. If you select the loan account from the home page and then select "Edit Account" from the account menu what is the "Interest category" set to?
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
4 Posted by darwin1357 on 30 Jan, 2010 05:50 PM
Ben,
I am experiencing the exact same problem as Paul. I setup a loan account with a beginning balance of let say $260K, When I apply a payment of $2100 against it the entire amount is deducted from the principal.
I'm currently running a Mac with 10.6.2 OSX and Moneydance 2010r2 (735) installed. I've attached an image of my Loan setup window.
Looking for to your response on how we might resolve this issue, as I sure Paul and I aren't the only folks facing this challenge.
Thanks in advance,
Darwin
Support Staff 5 Posted by Ben Spencer on 30 Jan, 2010 08:37 PM
Hi Darwin
The attachment is not present could you attach it again.
Ben
6 Posted by darwin1357 on 31 Jan, 2010 03:40 PM
Ben,
Thanks you for the speedy response.
Let me add a bit more clarity to my problem. My central issue was being able to manually record split transactions against my mortgage loan and have it make the proper calculations. Using the reminder function appeared to work just fine (set aside the daily compounding of interest issue). But when ever I tried to input the transaction manually the entire amount was applied against the loan.
For now I'm using the reminders but would like to be able to input the transaction manually. I've attached the Mortgage account setup window.
Thanks again,
Darwin
7 Posted by darwin1357 on 31 Jan, 2010 04:35 PM
Ben,
Thanks you for the speedy response.
Let me add a bit more clarity to my problem. My central issue was being able to manually record split transactions against my mortgage loan and have it make the proper calculations. Using the reminder function appeared to work just fine (set aside the daily compounding of interest issue). But when ever I tried to input the transaction manually the entire amount was applied against the loan.
For now I'm using the reminders but would like to be able to input the transaction manually. I've attached the Mortgage account setup window.
Thanks again,
Darwin
8 Posted by alannies on 01 Feb, 2010 02:24 PM
I have a problem that I just discovered that is probably different but I will describe it here. I have my mortgage account in the reminder section and the amounts appear to be correct for principle, interest and escrow--But when the data are entered into the accounts, the amounts are not correct. The principle and interest seem stuck entering the amount from a previous month. I can go to the loan account and again the data are correct including the next payment, but when it is entered by the reminder section it is incorrect. This started about the time of the switch from MD 2008 to MD2010. Has anyone else seen this and how do I fix it.
Support Staff 9 Posted by Ben Spencer on 01 Feb, 2010 04:09 PM
Hi Darwin
The mortgage account will not automatically calculate principle and interest for you if you manually enter the transaction. Manually transferring an amount to the mortgage account will do just that, i.e. a transfer from one account to another. The only way to get the system to automatically calculate the principle and interest is to use the automatic loan reminder.
alannies
The problem you are describing is quite different from the one in this thread. it has been brought up before but we have never been able to reproduce it. I would greatly appreciate it if you could start a new thread describing the specific problem you are having and if you can attach an example data file that demonstrates the problem.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
10 Posted by Ellen Isaacs on 09 Apr, 2010 10:36 PM
Hello,
I started using MoneyDance Jan 1 of this year and I have had the same problem described in this thread (loan payment going entirely to principal). I see your post explaining that you have to set up an automatic loan reminder, but you don't explain how to do that. And will this work retroactively? I've now made 4 payments, all of which were deducted entirely from the principal, and I'd like to get this corrected so that all four payments are properly split between interest and principal. How can I get this to happen?
11 Posted by Jaume Miralpeix on 11 Apr, 2010 03:09 AM
Hello,
I have the same problem as Ellen, but worse :(
I have imported my file from MS Money and I have 4 years of payments in my loan account, all of which are not split between capital and interest.
What am I supposed to do in this case? It amounts to 48 payments that I would need to split between interest and capital.
Thanks,
Jaume
Support Staff 12 Posted by Ben Spencer on 08 May, 2010 07:10 PM
Loan reminders are either created when you create the loan account or when you edit the loan account properties. If you have an existing loan account select it to bring up its register. Then select Account->Edit Account. When you click the OK button on the loan account properties window Moneydance will ask you two questions.
First: "Would to transfer the amount of this loan to an account?". Click No.
Then "Would you like to create a reminder for you loan payment at this time?" Click Yes.
That will bring up the loan reminder window as shown in the attached screenshot. Set the interest category to "Loan:Interest". Also set the frequency of the reminder.
With regard to importing loans from MS Money. MS Money is not actually able to export loan accounts to a QIF file. When Moneydance encounter a transfer between two accounts in a QIF file it will create the other account to give it some where to enter the balancing entry of the transfer. However since MS Money didn't actually export the loan account the split information is lost. This is clearly a problem and there is no easy solution. All i can recommend is to create a new loan account in Moneydacne give it a loan reminder and set the start date on the reminder to be the original start date of the loan. This will create all the intervening reminders in the reminder notification window on the home page. You would then have to accept each one of those reminders to apply the transaction to the register. When you are satisfied that the transactions are correct go ahead and delete the other incorrect loan account.
Ben Spencer
13 Posted by jano on 06 Apr, 2011 10:37 PM
Is this still the case with the latest 2011 version?
My situation:
I am using the 2011 beta.
My checking account automatically sends a payment each month to my lender. MD is setup to have a loan, but I turned off the reminders.
MD downloads this transaction from my checking account, and I have it setup as a "transfer" within MD from the checking account to the loan. Unfortunately, the loan is applying the total amount to the principal, not splitting it up to interest vs. principal.
I have not tried this yet, but if I have the payment reminders setup, and when I clear them, will it match the payment with the "transfer" from the checking account?
Thank you!
Support Staff 14 Posted by Ben Spencer on 06 May, 2011 07:09 PM
If you are not using the special loan reminders to record the loan payments you will have to enter the principle and interest split manually.
I am not certain what you man by your last question. "if I have the payment reminders setup, and when I clear them, will it match the payment with the "transfer" from the checking account?" Could you rephrase it?
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
15 Posted by jano on 06 May, 2011 10:36 PM
I will try to explain it a little more clearly.
The mortgage payment is expensed in my checking account on the ledger. In the Category section of the ledger, I chose the loan account, so it "transfers" the payment there. If I have the notifications setup, will the "transfer" be split appropriately, or do I have to manually split it still?
What I'm trying to accomplish is to have the split done automatically, while having it matched to the expense in my checking account.
Hope that makes sense!
Support Staff 16 Posted by Ben Spencer on 07 May, 2011 03:17 PM
If you are entering the transaction manually you will need to enter the split manually as well. He only way to have the principle and interest split auto calculated is to use the special loan reminder.
17 Posted by Paul Pinocci on 14 May, 2011 07:49 PM
Jano, If you record the transaction from the reminder to your checking account, it will automatically split the interest and principal, and a principal only payment will be "transferred" to the loan account. Then, when you download that payment from your bank account to your checking account, MoneyDance should merge the downloaded transaction to the one you recorded from the reminder. To make sure it will merge, I make sure the date and Payee (and of course the amount) are the same. You can configure the Payee in the reminder. For the date, I configured my reminder for the first of every month, even though my recurring bank payment is set for the 5th of the month. But if the 5th falls on a weekend or holiday, it posts on a different day. So all I do is when I see the transaction post on my bank account, I record the transaction from my Reminder and change the date to match the post date. Then I download and merge. I actually went through the process described in post 12 above for my home loan that started in 2003. I set up the loan with reminder starting in 2003, accepted all of the reminders since then to match to the Payee and dates of the existing transactions in my checking account, and then deleted the old ones. It was quite easy. Just make sure you jot down your checking account balance before you start recording the transactions from your Reminders, so you know if you messed anything up. I did a year at a time (record 12 new transactions from Reminder, delete 12 old transactions) and then verified my checking account balance was back to the correct amount. Hope that helps.
18 Posted by meg on 26 Sep, 2011 02:35 AM
This is probably a dumb question, but here it goes:
I set up a loan account for the mortgage, and when the payment posts from my checking account, I categorize it to the loan. However, then it doesn't show up as an expense on my home page for expenses (in the charts and graphs etc). What am I doing wrong?
Thanks!
Meg
Support Staff 19 Posted by Ben Spencer on 29 Sep, 2011 12:35 PM
You are not doing anything wrong. A mortgage payment is not an expense since it does not decrease your net worth. It is a transfer from an asset to a liability and your net worth is not affected. Which is to say you are not actually spending money.
In a sense this is similar to transferring from checking to savings. Such a transfer should not be counted as income since it does not increase the net worth.
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support