Auto Loan Shows as a Positive Value (edited)
I've linked my auto loan and mortgage to keep the balances current, and I know they will not show any transactions. But I also add my vehicle as an asset, separately of course, but the loan has a positive number, indicating it's being counted as an asset instead of a liability.
My mortgage is displayed as a proper liability, with the balance being negative. I also added my home, and it is properly interpreted as an asset.
And the auto loan balance is being subtracted from the mortgage balance, and the result is interpreted as the total liability.
Example:
Mortgage balance = -$100,000
Auto loan balance = $13,000
Total liabilities displayed = -$87,000 (should be -$113,000)
Comments
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Let me ask some questions to get a better handle on your issue…
(1) Are both mortgage and auto loan accounts listed under Liabilities?
(2) Assuming you established the balances of these accounts when you created them, they each should have a first transaction called something like "Opening Balance." Is that correct?
(3) Do the amounts for those "Opening Balance" transactions both have the same sign? They should both appear in the Transaction Activity list in black print with no sign — indicating a negative because this is a liability account.
DryHeat
-Quicken Classic (1990-2020), CountAbout (2021-2024), Simplifi (2025-…)0 -
Answers in BOLD
(1) Are both mortgage and auto loan accounts listed under Liabilities? Yes
(2) Assuming you established the balances of these accounts when you created them, they each should have a first transaction called something like "Opening Balance." Is that correct? No, there are no transactions. It states they aren't supported. Both updated 1 hour ago with correct balances in the accounts list, except the auto loan balance is positive and the mortgage is negative.
(3) Do the amounts for those "Opening Balance" transactions both have the same sign? They should both appear in the Transaction Activity list in black print with no sign — indicating a negative because this is a liability account. No. In the accounts list, under Liabilities, the auto loan has no sign, and the mortgage has a negative sign. In the Liabilities heading, in accounts, the amount shown is the auto loan amount (positive) added to the mortgage (negative), effectively showing an incorrect total liability. So instead of the total liabilities showing as $113,000, it's displayed as $87,000.
FYI: I am hesitant to remove and re-add the auto loan as it belongs with 5 other accounts for the same bank. Which would effectively wipe out virtually every existing transaction along with all my corrections.
Thanks!
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Sorry, I didn't realize that these were linked to financial institutions and that the balances were downloaded, not entered and updated by you. For some reason, I wrongly interpreted your post as about manual accounts.
There have been reports of some institutions downloading balances with the wrong sign (or at least Simplifi interpreting them that way). You might post the identity of your institution and what kind of account it is (at that institution) that you are downloading as an auto loan. Perhaps someone else will have experience with your particular situation.
DryHeat
-Quicken Classic (1990-2020), CountAbout (2021-2024), Simplifi (2025-…)0 -
The auto loan is from Citizens Bank. Balance shows positive amount.
The mortgage is Freedom Mortgage. Balance shows negative amount.
Thanks
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Hello @MikeZ,
Thank you for reaching out. To help troubleshoot, please provide more information. When did this issue first start? Has it always been this way, or is this a recent change? Is the loan balance itself correct, but showing as a positive number instead of a negative number?
Have you tried resetting the account connection for this account to verify if that resolves the issue?
I look forward to your reply!
-Coach Jon
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I am brand new to Simplifi - signed up in Sept.
So, yes, it's always been this way. For about 3 weeks now.
Yes, the balance itself is the correct amount, just shows positive.
No I haven't reset the connection. I don't want to disconnect it because I have 4 other accounts with that institution and do not want to risk having fix all the transactions again.
But, the other 4 accounts work just fine and have since I first connected them.
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Hello @MikeZ,
Thanks for the reply! Resetting the account connections should not cause any problems with the transactions already within Quicken Simplifi. If you can go ahead and try, this will help us continue troubleshooting. If you can also provide a screenshot of the balance in Quicken Simplifi and a screenshot of the balance from your bank's website for comparison, this would also be helpful!
-Coach Jon
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I reset the connection several times and tried setting it to different loan types, but the amount shown always shows positive.
Intereseting thing happened, though. I added as new once so there were 2 auto loans. The original was disconnected but had 2 months of transactions and showed $0 balance. The new added loan account had the right balance, positive, and no transactions.
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@MikeZ, thanks for the reply!
If you added the loan account as new, and the new account displayed the correct value, it sounds like you may need to establish a completely fresh connection with the original account instead of performing a reset. You can do so by following these steps:
- Delete the newly added connected account, or make it manual so it is no longer linked to the bank (the steps for making an account manual can be found here).
- It sounds like the original account is already manual, but you will want to confirm this by checking for it in the 'Manual Accounts' section under Settings > Accounts.
- Go back through the Add Account flow to reconnect to the bank.
- Carefully link the account found to your existing Quicken Simplifi account by following the steps here.
Your other option would be to keep the new account, since it has the correct value when connected to the bank. If you go this route, you can also import your historical account balances to re-fill in your net worth, if needed:
Let us know how things go!
-Coach Natalie
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I've decided it's not really important to have the loan accounts, so I removed them. I still track the payments for them and for now that's enough. I know the payoff dates, so it'll be fine without them.
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