A Question About Account Types

ajbopp

Back in November I bought a new car. In December my first payment came due.

Of course, I set up a new account with GM Financial and gave it a type of "Auto Loan" which seemed like the correct thing to do.

But when I tried to set up the recurring payment series as a transfer from my bank account to my GM account, I was informed in little red letters that this was not a valid account type to transfer to.

Just for the heck of it, I set up my GM account as "Other Banking" and now I can transfer to it just fine. But, of course, the balance of the account no longer displays in the Liabilities section of the Account List and throws off what's reported as Net Worth.

I'm just wondering what the rationale might be for not allowing the user to transfer money to an auto loan account?

UrsulaA

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/25004#Comment_25004

Sounds correct - the auto loan company owns the other side of the transfer.

ajbopp

Also (and I think this might be a bug) when I changed GM to Other Banking, I went back to December to change that month's car payment to a transfer. Seemed to work well, until I noticed that the loan was gone from liabilities.

Then I changed the account type back to Auto Loan, and returned to December to see that only one side of the transfer was now displayed:

I haven't examined what the effect of this might be to my Spending Plan or other areas of the system, but it seems like it could throw off reporting and any number of other things.

UrsulaA

Interesting. If you change the account type to Other Credit, will it let you do a transfer?

I noticed an error message that loan accounts do not support transactions for a closed personal loan I synched.

ajbopp

@UrsulaA Good thought. I did try that and it worked. It also automatically fixed the "only one side" issue in the Transfers section of the spending plan. It displays in the account list as a credit and not a liability, which is strictly incorrect, but I can live with it.

UrsulaA

Great to hear that worked. What matters is having a correct loan and net worth number.

ajbopp

I still don't understand why I wouldn't be able to transfer money to an auto loan though.

Oh wait, I may have answered that question myself, just earlier this morning:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/24980#Comment_24980

I don't "own" both sides of the transfer.