Loans and payment schedules

Use a loan record when you borrow money and repay it in regular payments. Pop Books works out the schedule and splits each payment between interest and principal. Open Assets and loans in the side rail, then the Loans tab.

Adding a loan

Choose Add a loan. You give:

• The lender, and the amount borrowed.
• The yearly interest rate.
• The number of payments.
• How often you pay: weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly or yearly.
• The first payment date.
• The accounts for the loan and the interest expense.

Payments are level. The last one clears the balance, so the principal parts add up to the amount borrowed exactly. If you want the money received posted too, you can add a drawdown entry.

Posting a payment

1. Open the loan.
2. Choose the payment to make, or type your own amount. Any amount that covers the interest is allowed. The rest reduces the balance.
3. Choose where it was Paid from: an account, or a bank line.
4. Post the payment.

If you pick a bank line, the line sets the date and amount, and the line is marked as matched. Undo a payment from the loan, or undo the bank line from the bank screen. Both put the loan back as it was.

Reports

Each loan has a schedule. You can see it on screen, or download it as PDF or Excel. The balance is the amount borrowed less the principal in payments that still stand.

Good to know

• Interest is booked when you pay, not before. Interest has not been accrued between payments. Ask your accountant if you need an accrued figure at year end.
• Loans and loan payments refuse a bank account in a foreign currency.
• No lender statement or loan document is produced. Keep the lender's own paperwork.
• The schedule is a plain level-payment calculation. If your lender uses a different method, such as a different day count, the lender's figures win. Enter what the lender charged.
• The loan screens have not yet been tried by hand against a real company file.