How to Categorize Mortgage Transactions
Let’s walk through how to manage your home loan / mortgage transactions in Billroo so your budget stays accurate (and nothing gets double-counted).
First up — your regular mortgage repayments. These should be added under Expenses, so they're included in your normal spending totals and reflect your actual financial commitments.
Important Note: Mortgage repayments should be a negative $ value, as it is money coming OUT of your budget, e.g. an expense / financial commitment. It's important that you're categorizing the outgoing repayment, not the positive instalment going into your mortgage account.
For the total amount deducted for the mortgage, categorize it as Mortgage or you can customize the expense category to whatever makes sense, e.g. Expense - Mortgage, Expense - Home Loan, Expense - Investment Property depending on your preferences in terms of managing your overall budget.
If you have an investment property you might choose to categorize those repayments as Investment Property or under the name of the property.
If you have multiple investment properties you can create a separate expense category for each property, or you could keep them all under one category and use Tags to track expenses for each property.
Other Mortgage Transactions
If you have your mortgage account synchronized with Billroo, your interest charges and incoming mortgage repayments will also appear in your Transaction list. These should be assigned to the Transfer category, which keeps them out of your budget calculations and prevents any duplication.
You've already "paid" the interest as part of the mortgage repayment expense, so adding the interest charge as an extra budget expense will be duplication.
The mortgage repayment in the mortgage account is a positive value that matches the amount you paid out of your everyday account, so categorizing it as an Expense would make your overall mortgage "expense" appear as a zero balance.
If something doesn't make sense please don't hesitate to reach out to support@billroo.com, we are here to help!