My house loan payment some times gets out of sync with the bill payment
series. (I think Money occasionally misses the match after downloading my
bank statements, and I don't catch it.)

When this happens, I need to delete a payment in the Bills & Deposits list,
since it shows past due.

Occasionally (twice now) when I do this the loan changes from a Category of
Loan Payment (tied to my loan) in to a Paycheck!

If I edit the bill series, the splits don't add up to the total (they sum
the wrong way, so the Unassigned is twice the loan payment). No matter what
I do at this page I can not get the splits to add up, and I can't delete the
existing Principal or Interest lines to replace them with new Principal and
Interest lines.

If I go to Setup Accounts and edit the loan that way, no matter what changes
I make to the loan the bill payment series doesn't get fixed.

The last time this happened I had to close the account, open a new loan, and
get the dates right so the numbers calculate to the correct values.

This is the second time this has happened and I don't want to go through
that again... But if it's happened twice it will likely happen again. Any
advice on how to set this up so it works correctly?

I'm using Microsoft Money 2004.

Thanks!

I'm not sure what you mean by the loan payment (loan parameters?) being "out
of sync" with the bill payment series, but if you are thinking of what I'm
thinking of--the loan wizard saying the loan parameters do not match the
current balance because of, say, accelerated principal payments--this is a
non-problem. You suggest this might be a problem with non-match of a
downloaded payment. That's a problem since you have to get the principal
transfers to the Loan Account correct. Speaking as someone who doesn't
download data, I can tell you that it is impossible to screw this up in this
way if you just do transaction entry by hand.

As to scheduled items morphing to Paycheck, this has long been a
"Feature"--and one of the most annoying ones--of M03+. See
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=106. The secret here is to Cancel
immediately and, if that doesn't work, delete the bill series and re-create
it. You shouldn't have to touch the loan account. The only thing that
couples the loan account to the scheduled payment is the wizard for defining
the loan account. You can create the loan payment series all by yourself.

This is exactly the problem I am running in to. Deleting and re-creating
the series by hand worked. (Once I figured out how to create the series
correctly...)

Thanks!

A good way to avoid the "mismatch" of the mortgage payment after it is
downloaded, is to make sure it is already in the register prior to
downloading from your bank. This assures that the payment number, the P & I
is always correct, as this information is calculated and entered from your
initial set-up.

In the loan set up/edit screen, I check the box to "enter this transaction
automatically" in my register a few days before it is debited from my account
(set up as automatic debit). So, each month, the transaction is downloaded
from my bank, and money matches it to the transaction it already placed in my
register 3 days earlier. This keeps the payment sequence (i.e. paymnt 1, 2,
3 and so on) in the sequence, and the P and I amounts are correct. Hope this
helps.

I think you need the help of any specialist on the matter.