Prosper.com and Quicken (or Money) do not play nicely. In fact, they can be downright burdensome to make them bridge the gap. Here I present my workable solution, but this should be addressed by Quicken, Money, and Prosper.com
The heart of the problem is that Quicken doesn’t understand the Prosper.com model… Sure you can declare a single loan at a time but try that with 10, 20, 46, or more loans. Keeping them all up to date quickly becomes an all day affair. Believe me I tried this approach for 2 months. If the accounts were linked via some automatic download like credit cards, bank, or investment accounts this is the correct way to account for the information today. Yet handling defaults and net gain or loss is much simpler with an umbrella account. Ergo, Quicken should create a new type of account and Prosper.com should implement automatic Quicken download.
I love both Quicken Deluxe 2007
I created a new investment account that I called Prosper.com. This makes it easy to track the money into Prosper the moment it leaves the bank account by setting the category of the bank transaction to [Prosper.com]. Now that the money is in the Prosper.com investment account (as cash), how do you track the individual loans and their performance? The short answer is you don’t.
The long answer is that leaving it in cash is the easiest thing to do. Then when you get your monthly statement from Prosper.com you enter the realized interest earned for the month as a single interest payment. This allows you to track your Prosper.com account globally.
Prosper.com or Quicken if you are listening, please address this issue. Either via a case study or white paper addressing the proper way to account for this information or via a tight integration as a new type of account. Personally I vote for an integration.
As I am sure all Prosper.com lenders track their finances through Quicken (or Money)… I would be very interested to hear if anyone has a better solution than mine.
I found Quicken 2007: The Official Guide
Update 4/10/07: This is my current approach: Adam Nash Merged with RateLadder to form the Ideal Quicken Solution (without Prosper integration)
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7 comments ↓
My solution is to have a “Prosper.com Cash” investment account, and a “Prosper.com Principal” asset account. Once a month I balance them out so the Principal account matches my total loans principal balance, and the Cash account matches my cash balance. This can be easily tracked through up to 2 transactions a month in the cash account. One is a transfer from Cash to Principal representing any new loans. A second is for increases in cash balance, with split categories between principal (transfer in from principal account), interest, and bank fees.
It’s a bit more complicated then what you have above, but then you can keep track of the non-cash principal balance and what your paying in fees. Also, it shouldn’t matter how many loans you have, it’s still 2 transactions a month.
That is interesting. I played around with it for a couple of days… Here are my thoughts…
It doesn’t solve my main grip which is tracking my Gain/Loss and ROI.
You are quite clear about your pros, but I think there is at least one con to having your Prosper account split into two accounts. What is your current balance? You have to add to accounts.
Given I cant get my prosper tax info from quicken and that I will be going to prosper regularly to check on loans and payments and such. Seeing my fees on the website is adequate.
My one umbrella account has fess handled as I only deposit realized interest which by definition has fees removed.
I think the issue and dilemmas we are both coming to grips with need to be addressed by quicken and prosper.
Hi RateLadder,
I thought it would be good to post my Quicken solution, which is based on having a separate security for each Prosper loan. See my post here.
I totally agree it would be better for Prosper to support downloadable transactions, or at least, an export to Quicken that we could use.
Adam
[...] Update (4/10/2007): RateLadder.com has their own solution… not as accurate as the one above, but worth linking to. I agree with them that it would be better for Prosper to offer a Quicken-compatible download format. Posted in Personal Finance, E-Commerce, Economics. [...]
[...] I think a hybrid of his approach and mine (simplified cashflows only: http://www.rateladder.com/2006/12/31/prospercom-and-quicken-the-workable-solution-for-playmates-that-dont-get-along/) would work great and be manageable… Here is my proposal merge my existing approach with his… (I haven’t tried this yet, but I think it will work great.) [...]
I share your frustration as how to accurately keep track of my Prosper portfolio thru Quicken. I am using Quicken Premiere ‘08 and it includes a Home and Business free 60 day trial that I’m using. Through that, I’ve started an “Accounts Receivable” acct where I create an invoice for each loan I fund and a Business spending (cash) acct to track everything from Prosper in my Quicken Biz Acct. I’m still experimenting with this to see what works better and open to new ideas. This is all Terra-Incognita for me.
“My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.” Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”
Pablo Picasso.
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