Home Loan Interest Manager - Reconciliation Errors

Reconciliation Errors

When you first set up an account in Home Loan Interest Manager Pro you may need to fine-tune the settings before you can start finding errors in your loans. Therefore if you are having problems reconciling your loan and mortgage statements with the estimates provided by Home Loan Interest Manager Pro, the following checklists will help.

Balance Checker Report

Once you have loaded all your statements and transaction for the loan, the balance checker will quickly point out any errors.

If the report displays an error then you need to check that:

1. All transactions on the statement (or for your date range period) have been entered.
2. You have entered the transactions in the same order as they appear on the statement.
3. You haven't accidentally entered a negative amount as a positive amount, or a positive amount as a negative amount.

Interest Checker Report

The first time you run the interest checker report you may find errors in most of your interest transactions. The following list will help you check that you have entered your information correctly and help you distinguish between small fine-tunning issues, and lender mistakes:

1. First check that the balances are correct (see above).
2. Next, check that the Days in Year field on the account is correct (Most common values are 365 and 360).
   
   This field is used to convert the interest rates from yearly rates into a value that can be used in the interest calculations, so if the days in year field is wrong every interest transaction will contain an error.
3. Check that you have entered all the interest rates for the account.
   
   Make sure you have created one Interest Rate record for each interest rate change on the account, and check that you have entered the correct interest Start Date and Rate.
   
   If you miss an interest rate change, or enter the wrong date or rate, then all interest transactions from that point forward will be incorrect.
4. Check that the Interest Checker Report is displaying the correct Interest Start Date and Interest End Date (and Days in the interest period) for each interest transaction.
   
   Home Loan Interest Manager Pro calculates the date range for each interest transaction and displays the dates in the Interest Start Date and Interest End Date fields. It also calculates the number of days between these dates and displays them in the Days field.
   
   As a quick check - if your lender normally charges you interest on the same day of each month (for example, on the 24th) then make sure all the Interest End Dates are set to the same day of the month (for example, 24). If you are normally charged interest month by month, then make sure all the period contain at most 31 days.
   
   To fix this type of problem, if ALL the date ranges are incorrect on the report then you will need to Edit the Account and change the value in the field "Interest Calculated Up to Day(s) Prior to Interest Transaction Date". If only one or two of the transaction date ranges are incorrect then you will need to Edit the Interest Transaction(s) and change the value in the field "Date Calculated Up To". Please refer to the Account Interest Details help topic for more information on how to use these fields.
5. Check that each interest transaction has been allocated an INTEREST category.
   
   The Interest Checker Report will only process transactions that have been allocated a category of type INTEREST. If the report is missing an interest transaction, then close the report, look for the missing transaction in the account, and assign it an INTEREST category
6. Check that no other transaction has been allocated an INTEREST category.
   
   If the report is displaying extra transactions, then close the report, look for the transaction in the account, and change their category to something other than INTEREST
7. Check that you have entered all your statements.
   
   If do not enter all your statements, then the transactions and balances required to calculate the correct interest may not be available.
8. Check that it is not a rounding issue.
   
   If there is a very small difference between each transaction, then it could be due to small rounding errors. Refer to Rounding Errors for more information.