Mr Watson,
Well, I was seeking (and have now implemented) a reasonable work-around, and
I'm sorry if my request seemed to be more of a rant about Money's
deficiencies. I'm glad that there are folks like you who see the
deficiencies as a challenge to find creative work-arounds, but I've been
using the program now for nine years (refugee from the demise of MYM-DOS) and
I've grown very cynical about MS's interest in fixing long-documented
inabilities to cope directly with some fairly basic financial transactions.
Should it really be necessary for us to invent a work-around just to fund a
mortgage loan from another account? Shouldn't Money be able to track cost
basis changes (positive and negative) correctly, something that I know that
people have been pointing to for years? About five years ago, I pointed out
to MS that Money believed my account with Sovereign Bank to be with Bank of
America, and was told that would be fixed at the next annual revision . . .
but none of these things ever do seem to get fixed.

So, while I appreciate that for some folks the inadequacies of the program
are a challenge and a springboard to creativity, others of us in the user
community would just value improved basic functionality. I know this may be
the wrong forum in which to "piss and moan" as you put it, but excuse us if
our frustrations with MS over this product sometimes show through as we seek
help!

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Great. Thanks again; that worked for me, so I don't need to adopt the less
elegant approach suggested in your subsequent message. Presumably the
program will now automatically calculate the P/I split as I enter each
payment received.

"Chris Cowles" wrote:

- quote -

"makemp" <makemp[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:58A943D6-2AA9-4C47-A84C-93473E78ECE2[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

If you're not interested in projected income or P&I, why not just create an
asset account and transfer funds to it? As payments are made to you, deposit
them to checking and split the transaction. Some comes from interest income,
the other part is a transfer from the loan asset account, and decrements the
balance. That would be much simpler to accomplish, but not very elegant.

"makemp" <makemp[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:58A943D6-2AA9-4C47-A84C-93473E78ECE2[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

What version are you using?

"Transfer" might not appear in a drop-down list, but you can type it in the
category with a colon separating it from the account from which the funds
are taken. E.g., "Transfer: Checking".

Mr Cowles,
Thank you, this is very helpful as I'm not particularly interested in having
Money project income or concerned about the internal P&I payment calculation.
I just want to track the transfer of assets to the loan correctly.

However, I'm finding the same problem as I was frustrated by when
experimenting myself earlier. In your second paragraph, you tell me to make
a negative "other" payment as a transfer from the funding account. However,
I cannot see how to do that. In the mortgage loan account register
transaction form there's no transfer option, or if I go to the funding
account register there's no mention of the loan in the transfer options list.
I'm obviously missing some probably very simple point. Do you see where I'm
going wrong?

"Chris Cowles" wrote:

- quote -

"makemp" <makemp[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:628D5B7D-50D7-407D-A0D0-CFB10AEA42CB[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

You can account for the disbursement of funds but cannot associate the loan
with an asset, because the asset which you don't own would be counted as
yours. This is sort of a reverse version of a mortgage refinance method
described by me and documented by Dick on
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?cat=23#Q86.

Create a loan account. If the effective date is in the past, you have to
change your computer clock to one day before the effective date. Let Money
calculate the balance but put $0 (yes, zero) as the payment and balloon.
Fill in correct interest rate. Money will calculate a balance of $0. Accept
that.

In the loan account register add an 'other payment' for a negative amount of
the disbursement, as a transfer from checking. The date on the transaction
must be the same day as above, ie, one day before the effective date.

Exit Money. Change clock to one day later. Reopen money. Go to loan account,
change account settings, change loan terms. Effective date should be one day
after transaction above. Loan amount should now be filled in for you,
because the register has a balance. Delete either P&I or balloon. If balloon
is non-zero and you're letting Money calculate P&I, change balloon to a
fixed number.

If you need a more sophisticated P&I/Balloon calculator, do it online
somewhere, or use a cheap financial calculator. Feed those numbers to Money
but you have to let Money calculate at least one field.

When you're finished, Money will have calculated all terms and you'll have a
transfer from checking to loan that accounts for the movement of money.
You'll have to determine for yourself whether scheduling the payments
(deposits) properly projects the income in your budget.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

I think you are vastly overstating the issue and its impacts. You can easily
create a loan where you are the lender. The only thing Money doesn't readily
support is having that money you just lent "come from" somewhere in some
other account that Money knows about. There are several workarounds, but you
seem eager to just piss and moan, not find a way to get done what you want
to do.

"makemp" <makemp[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:628D5B7D-50D7-407D-A0D0-CFB10AEA42CB[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

So, if I understand you correctly, the answer is that, no, Money cannot cope
with making loans in a clean, "fully accounted for" way, and that some sort
of inelegant, makeshift fix is necessary. But I don't understand why I'm
allowed to make a monetary transfer to, for example, the "asset" account in
which I track my home's assessed value but not to set up a loan account for
which I am the lender. That seems to be odd, even given MS Money's failure
over many years to correct fairly basic deficiencies. Is it possible that
there's just some account details setting that I need to tweak to allow me to
fund a loan in a clean way? It's not as if we are talking about a rare
behavior here, or MS wanting to sell an add-on service (like GainsKeeper) to
achieve things that one has a right to expect Money itself to be able to do.


"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, makemp wrote:

- quote -

Have you actually tried entering a transaction?

You might want to work with a copy of your file while you are
checking things out.

From the checking account, you could enter Loan Payment under the
SPECIAL heading at the bottom of the list, or you could enter the
payment received in the loan account register.

- quote -

Money does not debit the cash that you lent when you make the loan.
One way you can work around that by making a payment transaction,
but leave the category blank. Fill in the memo.

I have recently funded a mortgage loan. I was hopeful that Money would be
able to handle this transaction reasonably easily when, on trying to set up
the account, the program asked me whether I was the borrower or the lender.
However, at no stage was I asked to make a funding transaction to the new
loan account, and in several ways Money seems to regard me as the borrower
(e.g., only "transfer" option is labeled "loan payment," and the program
expects me to be making instead of receiving the payment).

Can someone please advise me as to how to set up this loan account
correctly? Or is this another of those things (like tracking cost basis
changes correctly) that Money just doesn't handle?