Loans and amortization schedules

Where to find it

Assets and Debts → Debt Management. It's also a step in your Task List: Add your loans & debts.

Have a list of loans or a lender's statement? You can import them.

Adding a loan

Choose Add Loan and enter:

• Loan details: the loan's name, amount and interest rate.
• Payment terms: the payment amount, the number of payments, how often they're made (Monthly, Semi-monthly, Quarterly or Annual), the loan's start date, and the first payment date (leave it blank for the same month the loan starts).
• How the payment works: the same total every payment (principal and interest together), or the same principal every payment, with interest added on top.

A loan stays active until you say otherwise, and is marked Paid off once its schedule runs out.

Extra payments

• Recurring: an extra amount, how often it's paid, and when it starts and stops. Leave the dates blank to run from the loan's start until it's paid off.
• One-off: under Extra Principal Payments, add each payment with its date.

When the terms change

Use Schedule Changes to record, from a given month, additional borrowing, a new interest rate, a new payment amount, or the number of payments left. You can also set the interest and principal of a single payment, or click a payment in the schedule and state what it actually was.

The amortization schedule

Each payment with its opening balance, any new borrowing, interest, principal, extra payment, total payment and ending balance, plus a summary by year. Export Amortization Schedule gives you Excel or PDF, for one loan or all of them (one sheet per loan, plus a summary), or emails it.

How your loans reach your statements

Your trial balance stays the record of your books. Your loan schedules are used on the cash flow statement for loan proceeds and payments, and Ask Lou shows you any difference from your books as unrecorded notes payable activity. Active loans also carry into your forecasts.