Quicken calculation of loan principal/interest allocation

Dave,

When you set up the loan did you specify the period for the interest as daily? Interest calculated in that manner would fluctuate as you say since depending on the month there would be + or - a day between the 26th of each month.

Steve Dawson

I'm using Q2006 for Mac, and in the loan set up window, I don't see any option to specify the period for interest as daily. From the loans list, when I click on New, I get a window entitled Loan Interview. That window asks the following questions (and give the following answers):

Are you borrowing or lending this money? Borrowing Have any payments been made on this loan yet? Yes Have any prepayments been made on this loan? No Is this a fixed rate or variable rate loan? Fixed Does this loan have a balloon payment? No Does this loan use US or Canadian amortization? US

Once I've answered those questions, I get another window, which asks whether to start from the first payment or the next. I choose next. I then get another window entitled Set up Loan with the following options:

Name of Lender Regular Payment: Principal + interest Date of next payment Frequency (I chose monthly, because that's how often the PAYMENTS are made, which is what I understand it to be asking) Payments remaining Annual interest rate Interest category Principal account Balance today

That's it. No place to specify how often interest is calculated. And the payment it calculates is not allocated as my bank does it (presumably for the reason you mention). So what's going on? Do the loans you set up in Quicken match the allocation that your bank makes? Anyone know what I can do to fix this? I find Quicken's tech support worse than useless.

Thanks,

David

David,

Try changing the Frequency to daily and see what that gives you. I'm running the Windows version but I don't think there should be much of a difference. I did that and it brought my loan into balance with the statement. The other thing is that you should watch the date the payment is applied to the account and verify that it is the same date you show your payment is being made. A day difference there will give a few pennies to dollars difference depending on the loan amount.

Steve Dawson

How do I change the frequency to daily? There's no option to do that. The frequency question referred to in my post is not the frequency of the interest calculation, its the frequency of the loan payments (there's not even an option for daily in the pull down list).

David