I set up a new loan account for my home mortgage, choosing the account for the interest to be recorded in and setting up a split for the portion of each month's payment that goes into the escrow account for tax and insurance payments. The wizard completed without issue, but when I attempted to make the first payment, it doesn't affect anything, that is nothing get's deducted from the loan amount and nothing gets added to the interest account or the account that's for the escrow. So, what did I did?

It seems like this is another issue with the program automatically setting account opening date, not for the date specified, but for the current date. In the case of a loan, it doesn't seem like there's any way to change it either.

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The only way I could accomplish the loan setup I wanted (start recording the payments as of the first of this year, even though I'm just setting up KMyMoney now) was to change the computer date to one prior to the first of the year, and then set up the loan. Once I had it set up (not easy in light of the skimpy documentation for loans), I still had to edit the first payment details to be correct. the rest seem to be what they should be.

There definitely seem to be problems with the loan module being able to set dates prior to "today's date" for loans that were initiated in the past. Should this be reported as a bug?

Since I read the mailing lists much more that the forum, I replied to your post to the KDE docs list before seeing this. I would not consider the date issue a bug, although it might be worth filing a "wishlist" bug as the behavior, while "correct" could be more user-friendly. Note, however, there have been some recent changes in this opening date handling, so what version of KMM are you using?

I also think there is an easier way than changing the computer date to set up the loan account and transactions to cover payments made in the past. If you set up the loan account and schedule now, you can then change the opening date of the account. You can then duplicate/move/edit payment transactions for all past payments.

In terms of entering the first scheduled payment apparently not doing anything, that does seem strange. Are you saying you entered the next scheduled payment, but no transaction shows up in either of the referred accounts? If you edit the schedule, is it showing the next payment date advanced to the next month, or is it still showing the current payment date?
Jack

Thanks for your response.

ostroffjh wrote:Since I read the mailing lists much more that the forum, I replied to your post to the KDE docs list before seeing this. I would not consider the date issue a bug, although it might be worth filing a "wishlist" bug as the behavior, while "correct" could be more user-friendly. Note, however, there have been some recent changes in this opening date handling, so what version of KMM are you using?

I'm using 4.7.2

ostroffjh wrote:I also think there is an easier way than changing the computer date to set up the loan account and transactions to cover payments made in the past. If you set up the loan account and schedule now, you can then change the opening date of the account. You can then duplicate/move/edit payment transactions for all past payments.

Yeah, that's just the problem. Trying to reset the opening date results in the date being set in the edit screen, but it doesn't actually get changed, because when I try to enter a payment prior to today, I get an error saying I can't enter a transaction prior to the account opening date.

ostroffjh wrote:In terms of entering the first scheduled payment apparently not doing anything, that does seem strange. Are you saying you entered the next scheduled payment, but no transaction shows up in either of the referred accounts? If you edit the schedule, is it showing the next payment date advanced to the next month, or is it still showing the current payment date?
Jack

I got the "not doing anything" issue straightened out, but still had to manually enter the correct info for the split in the first transaction. So, the split in the checkbook ledger looks like::

Mortgage loan: $150.59
Mortgage interest: $150.14
Escrow account: $149.27

This totals the amount deducted from the checking account and each amount shows up in its corresponding category. The Mortgage loan is the liability account for the loan and gets reduced by the principle amount. So that all appears to be working ok, even if I did get there by a circuitous route.

The only other problem is that I can't figure out how to get the part of the payment that goes to reduce the liability to show up in reports and be available to budget creation.

Thanks again for your help.
Richard

Regarding the message about transaction date before account opening date - this is checked for ALL accounts referenced in the transaction, not just the loan account. The checking account is probably OK, but any category is also checked, as internally, a category is just a special type of account.

I don't use budgets, so I'm not sure whether this can do what you want. Hopefully someone else can address this aspect. I also feel that how KMM handles the asset of the house itself can use some improvement, but I haven't been able to come up with any solid recommendations yet. This actually applies to any asset purchased with a loan, which may have it's value adjusted due to depreciation (such as a car) or general market changes (such as a house.) However, I doubt this is going to be a high priority issue for anyone for a while.

ostroffjh wrote:Regarding the message about transaction date before account opening date - this is checked for ALL accounts referenced in the transaction, not just the loan account. The checking account is probably OK, but any category is also checked, as internally, a category is just a special type of account.

Yeah, I think I checked all the other accounts and categories, but to no avail

ostroffjh wrote:I don't use budgets, so I'm not sure whether this can do what you want. Hopefully someone else can address this aspect. I also feel that how KMM handles the asset of the house itself can use some improvement, but I haven't been able to come up with any solid recommendations yet. This actually applies to any asset purchased with a loan, which may have it's value adjusted due to depreciation (such as a car) or general market changes (such as a house.) However, I doubt this is going to be a high priority issue for anyone for a while.

For the time being, I would be happy to see the monthly mortgage payments be available for inclusion in the budget. I did come up with a work around that is far from ideal, but that will suffice for now. I posted it on another thread.