Setting up a loan to an employee and one for a non-employee in Quickbooks Desktop

I've been reading many articles about setting up employee advances and loans.  Most of them say something different about how to go about it but none of them I find are that clear about how to start the transactions in the account.  From what I have read it sounds like I need to create an Other Current Asset account.  So I created an Other Current Asset account labelled Loans & Employee Advances.  And then created Sub Accounts labelled Loan - Staff name or Loan - Person's Name.  

I know how to create the payroll deduction so it takes it from the staff's pay and puts it in that Loan acct, but what I'm not clear on is how to start the transactions in the Loan account to show the Loan to the Staff or Person.  Some of the things I've read say when you create the Other Current Asset account that you put a starting balance, but other article say you don't.  

One article said to create a journal entry to establish the opening balance for the loan and then create a credit in Accounts Receivable for that customer.

Some articles say to just do a transaction from the Cash Account to the Loan Account, so I'm a little confused about the correct way to set this up.

I have two Bank accounts, one is the Primary Bank Account for most all business transactions, then a seperate account for Payroll Transactions.  The loan to the staff was e-transferred to them from the payroll account.  The Loan for the non-staff was e-transferred to them out of the Primary Bank Account.

So wouldn't I also have to show which account the money is coming from to go to the Loan Account?

So for the staff loan would I have to show the money going from the Payroll Account to the Accounts Receivable Account, then from the Accounts Receivable Account to the Loan Account?  And how do I go about showing that correctly or showing however you do it correctly?