“Personal” finances/tracking question
tsfjax
Member Posts: 47 ✭✭
So I am all-in with Wave and am tracking my personal expenses in addition to my business. An issue that I am running into on the Personal side is tracking my mortgage payments. Right now, my payments are being recorded in Wave as a transfer from my checking to my mortgage. As a result, my YTD “profit” (BTW, love that the personal finance tracking has the PNL option that’s still called PNL 
) is showing substantially higher because my mortgage payments aren’t being recorded as expenses. Is there a best practice out there to record these payments such that I can track the balance being imported from my bank but still capture the payments as expenses and not transfers?
0
Comments
Hey @tsfjax
A mortgage account can be an asset or a liability, depending on if you're the borrower or the lender. In this case the best report to view here would be your balance sheet. You're given a loan, and you've connected that loan account to your Wave personal account. Therefore it's mostly about reducing the balance. This isn't quite an expense as say, buying lunch, or buying a new computer. You're not creating a loan account for expenses. I would definitely reach out to a professional accountant about this if you have other questions which is why I've moved your post to the accounting technical support where a lot of accountants have their eyes!
Hey, @BarsinA. I don't think I explained my question very well, sorry. :-X
I understand the accounting aspect, but what I am struggling with is accounting for the "expense" since I am actually tracking my mortgage balance. If I wasn't then it would be fine (and maybe easier?) because I would be entering an expense and could file it under 'mortgage' as an expense code. But with my tracking the balance, it's showing in Wave as transferring out of checking into mortgage and both balances are updating.
Should I do a journal entry to document the "expense" of my mortgage payments outside of the "transfer" that moves the money?
Does that make more sense than my original version? Sorry for the confusion.
Hey @tsfjax! Thanks for reaching back out here and clarifying! No need to apologize!
From what I'm hearing here, it's sounding like that journal transaction should be your best bet, as it's going to make sure that everything's accounted for within that personal side of your account. Have you tried a few test journals to see if that's moving the balance in the right direction? Looking forward to trying to figure this out together, but I think if things are starting to look a little more complicated than we'd thought, you're going to want to reach out to a CPA!