How to Set Up Loans in QuickBooks 2019
Watch the QuickBooks 2019 video tutorial below. Learn about working with loans and how to set up properly with the long term and short term liability loans.
We have made it all the way down to module eight now. We’re going to talk in this module a little bit about working with Loans.
I want to go through and show you how to properly set up a loan. If you don’t set it up correctly, then you’ll have no idea what the balance is left to pay on that loan.
I’m going to show you how to set those up. And then, I’m going to show you how to create your loan payments. Once we’re done with that, we’ll go in and look at the loan manager that QuickBooks has.
But for now, let’s go ahead and get into setting up loans. This is section one.
Remember, in accounting, there are two types of loans. There are the short-term or the other current as QuickBooks calls them (and you’ll see several of those over here).
These are the ones that are paid off in 12-13 months. You also have long-term liabilities. These are the ones that are long-term. Five years, 30 years, that sort of thing.
You’ll want to make sure you set up each loan separately in QuickBooks so that, you can track where each payment is going, and how much you owe on each of the loans.
If you notice here, they’ve got several vehicle loans. And we’re going to set up another one, just to show you how this works.
All you need to do is right click anywhere and choose the New option. Remember! If you choose Loan here, it’s assuming a short-term. If you know you’re wanting the long-term loan you want to come down here. Choose Long-term Liability from this list. Then, hit Continue.
You’ll want to go ahead and type in your general ledger number (if you have one). Then, you want to put in the name of the loan. We’re going to call ours Loan – Vehicles (car).
We’re just trying to keep it consistent with the way they did things. But, you can name your loan anything you want to call it.
You can put it in a description (if you want). You can put the account number (but it’s not required). What you really do need though is the opening balance.
This would be how much you owed on the loan as of the start date of your company file. Let’s say it was $9,105.37, and then, we’ll go ahead and put in today’s date.
I’m going to click OK and then Save & Close. Now, you’ll see I have a new loan and I owe $9,501.37 on that particular loan.
Now, any time you make a payment, you want to put the payment towards this particular loan. I want you to notice that it didn’t ask you anything (how much was the interest rate, how many months did you take out the loan for). It didn’t ask you any of that stuff.
All we’re doing at this point is just setting up the loan in the Chart of Accounts. Later we’ll go into the Loan Manager and I’ll show you where you put all of that information in.
Let’s go ahead and go over into section two and I’ll show you how to make payments towards these loans.
Cindy McGuckin
Cindy McGuckin is an IT trainer with over 20 years of experience. Cindy currently manages the IT Training Department at Trident Technical College, she's a Member of the Association of IT Professionals, Charleston, SC chapter and the Treasurer of the South Carolina Association of Continuing Higher Education. Cindy is a Microsoft Office and QuickBooks expert and her online courses have received hundreds of 5-star reviews. Her no-nonsense approach to teaching complicated topics makes her classes engaging and interesting.
