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dsmithtioga
February 12, 2025
Question

Recording a Loan from an officer

  • February 12, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 0 views

I am trying to correctly enter a loan from an officer. I have set up a liability account, but the advice below does not say what tehg appropriate expense account(s) might be. Help!

  1. Select + New.
  2. Choose Journal Entry from the Other option.
  3. Enter the loan amount and log the appropriate amounts to the relevant expense accounts. For example, credit the Liability/Loan account and debit the appropriate expense accounts.
  4. Click on Save and close.

    1 reply

    FishingForAnswers
    FishingForAnswers
    February 13, 2025

    @dsmithtioga  There is normally no appropriate expense account to establish a loan.

     

    Generally speaking, two things happen when a company receives a loan.

     

    First, an asset increases. This is normally the deposit of money into a bank account, but depending on the logistics, it could be a fixed asset increasing.

     

    The latter happens when the entity loaning the money issues the check or money in such a way that it can be immediately turned over to whoever you're paying with the loan money, presumably for a major purchase.

     

    Second, the company recognizes that they are now liable to pay the amount of the loan back.

     

    In short, you aren't working with a liability account and an expense account; you're working with a liability account and an asset account.

     

    Since you're entering a loan from an officer, you would debit whatever bank account the officer's loan money was deposited into and credit the new liability, if you chose to do a Journal entry.

     

    I don't know if you're actually on Desktop or QBO; you are tagged for Desktop, but the instructions you quoted are for QBO.

     

    At any rate, you'd be better off in most cases using the standard functions in QB rather than the Journal Entries; QB isn't set up to source Journal Entries to certain reports as well as it should be.

     

    For instance, in Desktop, you could simply create a Deposit using the Liability as the source account. This would put money into the bank of your choice while establishing the Liability starting balance.

     

    I don't know what the exact equivalent in QBO would be, but it'd probably be whatever their Deposit equivalent is.

    Rainflurry
    Rainflurry
    February 13, 2025

    @dsmithtioga 

     

    "I don't know what the exact equivalent in QBO would be, but it'd probably be whatever their Deposit equivalent is."

     

    In QBO, use New > Bank deposit.  Assign the Loan Payable liability account to the deposit.  That records cash in the bank account and a corresponding amount as a Loan Payable liability.  Behind the scenes, that creates a journal entry (JE) that debits the bank account and credits Loan Payable. 

     

    As @FishingForAnswers mentioned, it's always best to use a standard QB form (deposit, check, bill, etc.) instead of a JE.    

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