How can I track a loan?

Problem

Loan payments are initially calculated based on the assumption that payment dates occur at regular intervals.

In real life however, this is rarely the case: usually payments occur a few days before their due date, but it's also possible that payments are skipped, extra payments are made, costs and penalty payments are due, etc.

Solution

FinFlow lets you track your loan the way your bank does: by taking into account the actual dates and amounts of your payments.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to do this: you'll need to enter an event for each payment you make.

When adding payments, make sure that you enter them as inflows: otherwise they'll be considered as extra loan amounts.

Open the "Loan - Tracking" example in the Help examples folder, to see how it's done.

Note

Banks use a wide variety of methods to calculate a balance. It may very well be that payments that occur before their due date don't generate interest at all, fixed compounding dates may be used, etc... : their figures will not always correspond with what FinFlow calculates.