Hi All,

I just set up my car loan in KMyMoney and noticed that the amortization payment (the payment against principal) doesn't show up at all in the Income/Expense report but the interest payment does.....

I suspect that this is some accounting principle but it's extremely confusing for an end user who just wants to track income/expenses every month to not have a $400/monthly amount listed in the report because it's going towards "amortization" (payment on principal on the loan). Am I missing something ? Is there a report that would capture the amortization payment so that when I run these reports and am making planning decisions I'm not leaving out $400/month payments against the loan?

Thanks in advance.

I never bump my own posts because I find it obnoxious but I figured I'd ask a similar question that hopefully will lead to an answer.

If I have a car loan open in KMyMoney. How do I ensure that my income/expense report reflects a monthly car payment? Entries entered against the car loan simply show up as "Amortization" which does not show up in my expense report.

Alternatively, does anyone have a creative and efficient way to track a loan while simultaneously being able to see numbers reflected in income/expense report?

I've been using KMyMoney for a decade now and just now deciding to use some of these features but so far I've found them to be counter-intuitive and/or not useful for my purposes. I'm assuming I'm just missing something.

Yes, because a cash flow is not necessarily an expense. Even though you look at it as an expense (since you don't have the money in your pocket anymore once you paid your monthly rate) it is not in the sense of accounting. Does the cash flow report give you more insights? I have no idea how you can do that so that the accounting principles are not violated.

I figured as much - it's frustrating because as an accountant it makes sense, as a general consumer who just needs to know expenditures per month, less useful. I'll check out the cash flow report and see what I think. Ultimately I just need an accurate report that tells me what I'm spending money on....

Yeah - tried that out and it's not going to work. I'll just keep doing it like I'm doing it which is keeping the loan entirely out of KMyMoney and just treating it like any other bill so it shows what I actually spend per month.

I think it's some kind of glitch. I think you need to talk to the firm.

How do you book the payment in kmymoney ?

I'm a accounting payable guy and when I take a loan to buy something I would book it on a category named liked "new car".

The amortizations payment then is booked from cash/bank account to "new car" so you could see the rest amount to pay.

I hope this make sense because I'm not so good in english as a germany guy.

You may want to take a look at this explanation. It provides some information on how loan accounts are handled in KMyMoney. The interest is an expense but not so much the amortization. So to follow up on it, here's the first (of your recurring) payment. A fourth account (category) comes into play which represents the interest expense (I use the letter Z here sine I is a bit ambiguous when displayed) and which has a current balance of zero for this example.

Transaction
C -> L: 99
C -> Z: 1

Balances after
C: 900
V: 10.000
L: -6.901
Z: 1

The balance of L now shows you your dues and the balance of Z represents the cost of the loan. Hope that makes it clear. If you need more information or have more questions, please let us know.

BTW: your English is understandable. If you think you can't express something in English, please feel free to add a German version also.