Once you have added your loan, you can add terms to it so that you can track different aspects of your loan.
- Click the Add Loan Terms button.
Add details about the loan.
A few of the fields are required (as noted below). You don’t have to add the others, but the feature will not track the balance and information properly.
Loan Details
- Title – Double-click on the title of your loan to change it to something more descriptive than the original name.
- Loan Type – If you selected the wrong loan type, you can update it here. This field is required.
- Original Balance – The initial principal amount of the loan. This does not include interest you will pay.
- Current Balance – This field is required. Make sure to look up your current balance so that the feature can properly track your current balance based on the other information you provide on this screen.
- Loan Length – The agreed-upon term of the loan. You can use the drop-down menu to change the time increment.
- Years
- Months
- Weeks
- Payments
- Interest Rate – The agreed-upon interest rate. This should be on the papers you signed for the loan.
- None
- Daily
- Monthly
- Semi-annually
- Annually
- First Payment Date – The date when you will (or did) make your first payment. If you prefer to track the loan by the final payment date, select Maturity Date.
- Maturity Date – The final payment date for your loan. If you don’t know, you can use the First Payment Date.
- Compounding Period – Select the time increment for the period that the interest is calculated.
- Payment Schedule – Select the time increment when payments are due. The default is Monthly since most loans must be paid on a monthly basis.
Loan Payment
- Frequency – The frequency by which you will pay your loan, this may be different than your Payment Schedule if you plan to make multiple payments.
- Principal – The principal is the amount of money that applies to your loan balance, reducing what you owe. Quicken will generate this number.
- Loan Interest – The interest payment is the amount of money you pay to the loan provider (it does not reduce how much you owe). Quicken generates this number.
- Add extra principal, tax, escrow, etc. – There are two parts to this section.
- Extra Principal - At first glance, you will notice the Extra Principal. If you plan to pay extra toward the principal, enter it here.
- + Click the + button to add additional information for things like associated regular fees and charges for your loan. This can include things like insurance, PMI, escrow, and fees. You can add up to four, and you can remove them if you don’t need them (or if you double enter something).
- Total – The total represents your regular loan payment. At first, you may find that your total is off by a little bit (usually by a penny or two). You can fix that by changing the amount here. Click on the pencil and change the number to your actual payment. Quicken will automatically update the fields above to make the calculations work.
- Click Continue when you are done.
Select the account from which payments will be made and what kind of reminder you would like.
- Pay From - Select the account that you want to use to pay the loan when you make a payment.
- Reminder Type – Select what kind of reminder you want for your payments and loan management updates. For the first two, you need to have your payment account selected to add the reminders.
- Payment Total Only – Creates a scheduled transaction for the loan payment total, but doesn’t split it into principal and interest.
- Detailed Reminder – Creates a scheduled transaction for the loan payment and splits the transaction into principal, interest, and other types of loan details. The principal and interest split will remain the same for all payments until marked Paid or Skip. Once you mark a payment, Quicken will adjust future scheduled transactions with updated principal and interest amounts based on the current balance. This means that all future payments show the same amounts, but they will automatically update once you mark the next payment on the schedule.
- No Reminder – You will not be reminded about the payment. Select this option if you have automatic payments and don’t need to be reminded to make the payment.
Click Finish to add your loan terms and details.