Loans, with the interest split out for you

Every instalment you pay is part principal and part interest, in a proportion that changes each month. Recorded as one payment to one account, your interest expense is wrong and so is what you still owe.

What Elvira works out

• An amortisation schedule from the principal, the rate, the term and the first payment date.
• Every instalment split into principal and interest, posted to the right accounts.
• The receipt entry that put the money in the bank in the first place.
• The current portion, what falls due within twelve months, reclassified out of long-term liabilities.
• What is still outstanding, live, and what the books say it is, checked against each other.
• Lenders kept as contacts in their own right, so a lender who is also a supplier is one record.

Contract or computed

The schedule can be computed by Elvira, or you can enter the instalment your loan agreement actually states and let the split follow from it. Banks round; agreements sometimes disagree with the mathematics by a few units, and the figure on the paper is the one you have to pay.

It checks itself

Elvira’s ledger check compares what the loan accounts hold against what the loans themselves explain, and names the entries responsible when they differ: so a journal posted straight to a loan account cannot sit there unnoticed.