Debt Planner (Prototype) not showing one of my debts as paid

I’m using the debt planner. I paid off one of the debts in November and it won’t show up as paid off?

Congratulations, @arodceo.

Can you tell me more about what it looks like in the template?
Is the Balance zero in the Balance History sheet?

It’s not. I thought I set it up right. I added it as a balance and account and in transactions I tried to fix it but it didn’t work? Any idea why it won’t update?

I’m afraid I still don’t understand exactly what isn’t working…

For the debt you paid off:

  1. Is the balance showing as $0 in the Balance History sheet?
  2. Is the debt linked into the Debt Planner sheet?
  3. Is the Debt Planner showing the same current balance as the Balance History sheet? As the Balances sheet?
  4. Is the balance coming from a Tiller Money feeds subscription? Or via manual balance entries?
  5. Does your Balance History sheet have an Account Id column (may be hidden)? Is there a value/hash in it for the debt you paid off?

What is the start date on your Debt Planner sheet?
What do you mean you added it “in transactions”? (The Debt Planner sheet does not reference the Transactions sheet.)

it’s not showing $0. It’s still showing 380 (which is the balance we agreed on) and I paid. So it should be zero now but it’s not.

I thought transactions would update the debt planner (for example let’s say I’m on a payment plan). So it wouldn’t? Is everything manual then?

The balance (debt) is a manual entry.

It’s actually quite automated, but there is no direct connection between what you enter in the Transactions sheet and the Debt Planner. The indirect connection works like this…

  1. Make a payment (check or credit card)
  2. Payment appears in your Transactions sheet via Tiller Money Feeds service
  3. When payment is received by the lendor, your linked balance is updated
  4. Updated balance appears in your Balance History sheet via Tiller Money Feeds service
  5. Debt Planner template pulls in the updated balance automatically

Make sense?

I think I might be understanding now.

So in the foundation sheet tab with transactions. Would I just mark it as ‘debt expense’. However it wouldn’t update the balance in the debt planner?

And additionally you would have to go into the balance to update the balance so it can reflect in the debt payment plan?

Good questions.

Regarding how to categorize in the Transactions sheet, there are some helpful instructions here.

As for the balance update, if you are using our subscription Tiller Money Feeds service and have linked the debt account, the balance should update automatically. If the account is not linked, you will need to do a manual balance entry using the Tiller Money Feeds add-on.

Ahh so there’s no way to mark a payment plan (say I’m paying $25/month towards a debt) from the transaction to then have it update in the debt planner monthly?

I would have to completely update it every month?

Is there any way to make it so that when you have a month you might be able to pay more (work bonus, etc.) it won’t assume that you will be paying that same amount in future months? Ex. I put an extra $1000 on top of my normal $500 and now the debt payoff totals are based on $1500 paid in every month.

That’s right, @arodceo. The workflows is streamlined with a Tiller Money Feeds subscription. The change in your balance will be recognized as a payment against the loan. Without updates to the debt balances in the Balance History sheet, you would need to make these changes manually.

Good question, @samuelckessler. The template doesn’t currently have that capability. As you’ve seen a one-month spike in your payments will erroneously bring your payoff dates in only for them to push out when your payments stabilize.

The tool works well if you just keep your payment plan stable and pay more occasionally without changing your payments inside the template. I’d recommend just paying more and allow the tool to catch up once that payment is processed and loops back to your Balance History.

This is not uncommon actually, that our data provider cannot pull that final $0 balance for whatever reason. You can insert a new row into the Balance History sheet and copy/paste and old entry for that loan and then update the data to reflect the $0 balance so it’s reflecting correctly elsewhere.