Loans

Open your loan in Financial Management → Loans. A loan is a calculator until you save it and link it to its account in Actual; after that it is tracked: Bench lines each installment up with the payment you made and, when you say so, splits it into principal and interest. The Guide button on every loan page opens an in-app guide with the same material as this page.

Loans normally uses the full workspace width without the global Changes panel.

Before opening this workspace, save or discard pending entity or budget edits from other pages. Bench shows an entry screen until those edits are resolved, with Save, Discard, Undo and Redo available in the temporarily expanded changes panel. The workspace’s own review/save actions remain separate. Once the workspace opens, its global pending-changes panel is hidden again. If you then create a global draft through Quick Create or Redo, the relevant panel opens without closing your current editor. Resolve the global draft there; local work stays in place. Re-entering the page or switching budgets checks pending drafts again.

Compare your loans

The Loans overview shows one compact table row per loan, with at most three lines in each cell. Its search, filters, and table header follow the reconciliation list design.

Five figures above the table summarize Outstanding Balance (current Actual liability balances), Upcoming Repayments (scheduled repayments in the next 30 days), Principal Repaid (opening principal less current balance), Interest to Date, and Interest Next 12 Months. Interest figures are calculated from current loan schedules, except for a loan tracked in Actual, which is summed up from its recorded payments plus the projection after them (so a payment made early counts as paid and is not listed as upcoming); the 12-month figure is a forecast, not a guarantee. A calculated balance is labelled in the table when a loan has no live Actual balance. Failed reads show Unavailable. Scheduled payments are not counted as paid; recorded history may cover only part of the loan’s lifetime. Forecasts identify their starting date, including lender restarts. Payment counts appear only under Principal paid; Next payment shows the amount and date. A confirmed payoff stops future payment and interest forecasts.

A loan row says Tracked from installment N when it is linked to its account in Actual, and Not tracked in Actual when it is only a calculation. The Accounts column shows only configured loan and repayment accounts and currently active offset accounts. Columns read from left to right: Loan, Terms, Outstanding, Next payment, Principal paid, Interest, Ends / Paid off, Accounts, and Status. The Terms column shows the current rate, repayment frequency, contractual term, and the next scheduled rate change when one exists.

Statuses use both color and words: active and paid-off loans are green, attention warnings are amber, blocked loans are red, drafts are blue, and archived loans are muted.

Needs attention lists loans with a write to Actual that did not finish, or settings that cannot be used. A loan with an unfinished write opens on Repayments; a loan whose settings cannot be used opens on Terms & Schedule, where the calculation method lives. Select a row or focus its loan link and press Enter to open it. Search by loan name, or use Show archived loans to include archived records. On smaller screens, scroll the table horizontally to keep rows compact. Hover truncated text to see its full label.

The five tabs

A loan page has five tabs, in the order a loan is set up:

Tab	What it is for
Terms & Schedule	The contract and the calculation: balance chart, events and the full schedule.
Link to Actual	Connects the loan to its account in Actual and sets how interest reaches Actual.
Repayments	One row per installment, matched to the payment that paid it, with Apply on each.
Loan Ledger	The loan account in Actual, row for row, with what each row is.
Linked Assets	The assets this loan financed, with your allocated debt and equity.

A loan that is not saved yet can use Terms & Schedule and Link to Actual; Repayments, Loan Ledger and Linked Assets open once it is saved. Discarding an unsaved loan clears its in-memory settings before you start another loan.

Terms & Schedule

The in-app Guide has section navigation for loan workflows and concepts. Its Settings section explains every calculation-method field and its available choices, including rounding, business-day adjustments and lender-statement allocation. It marks new-loan defaults; a preset or saved loan may use different values. The Calculation method section remains an overview.

The left panel holds the contract: loan type, amount, term, start date, the interest rate and Day count method, repayment frequency, and optional features (interest-only periods, a balloon payment, an offset account, fees and other costs). Everything on the right is worked out from it: the monthly repayment, total repayments and interest, the payoff date, a balance chart, the Events list and the amortization schedule. Edits on a saved loan stay unsaved until Save changes; tick Compare with saved to see the difference an edit makes first.

The balance chart starts at the opening position and uses one amount scale and a date-based time axis. Monthly and yearly points show the balance after the latest event in each period; hover or use the keyboard for details. Interest paid includes projected future charges and capitalized interest. The grid marks each year and evenly spaced amounts; the vertical scale adjusts to the visible lines. Turn on Interest axis to plot interest against a separate scale on the right. When scales differ, crossing lines do not mean the amounts are equal. Interest-bearing balance is the balance used to calculate interest on the event date; depending on the configured event order, it can be before the repayment. The tooltip breaks repayments into principal, interest and any other included components when the allocation is available; separately charged interest and fees are shown separately. Principal and interest remain visible when they are zero. Component percentages are shares of the period’s repayments. Use the legend to hide lines, show Events markers, or show Without what-ifs when available. That comparison removes optional events but keeps the opening offset and contractual rate changes. On tracked loans, a period can include both Actual and projected events; the Today line marks the current date.

The schedule’s Year and Month labels count calendar months from one repayment interval before the first repayment, with Month 1 as the minimum. Payment # counts repayments separately; monthly and yearly rows aggregate calendar periods.

Export CSV in the top bar downloads the current loan inputs, terms, calculation settings, four headline results, events and all rows of the All Events, Monthly and Yearly schedules. It includes the local generation date and time, identifies unsaved edits and, for a tracked loan, includes tracking context and the events read from Actual. The export reflects the current calculation, including what-ifs.

Events change a loan between its regular repayments: Extra payment, Redraw / Withdraw, Rate change, Fee and Repayment change. Extra payments, redraws or withdrawals, and fees can repeat weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or annually from a first date through an inclusive Until date. Rate and repayment changes are entered one at a time. An extra payment or withdrawal can instead target an enabled offset account; fees can be paid in cash or added to the loan. The in-app guide’s Events and what-ifs section explains each event and its options. The Saves column shows the interest and time each event saves (or adds), worked out in date order with each on top of the ones before it, so the rows add up to the totals above the list.

For a tracked loan the figures also show installments paid, amount repaid, interest paid and time remaining. The calculation has three parts: the contract before the tracking start, what really happened from the Loan Ledger, and a projection from today’s balance with the what-ifs you have switched on.

The chart shows Balance in Actual as steps on payment dates and a Today line. Light shading marks the time before tracking started, and only appears when installments come before the tracking start.
Events lists extra principal, draws and fees from the Loan Ledger as From Actual; they cannot be switched off. Events dated after today are What-if rows with an On switch.
The schedule has a Source column: From Actual up to the last real payment, blank for projected rows, and Not found in Actual for an installment with no payment. It opens at today; Jump to today returns there.
A payment made before its due date covers that installment. It is not shown as the next payment, and the projection continues from that due date, carrying the interest accrued since the payment.

Hover the chart for the installment, the time elapsed since the loan started, the share repaid, the payment in that period (with the interest in it, and any extra payment), and, for a tracked loan, whether the figures are the contract’s, Actual’s or the projection.

The chart opens Monthly for a loan of up to 10 years and Yearly for a longer one; the choice is remembered in this browser for a saved loan.

How this loan is calculated

The How this loan is calculated button in the top bar opens a plain explanation of the figures: the method and its version, the saved revision, the results (repayment, number of repayments, total repaid, total interest and payoff date), the rates, term, events, due-date and lender-statement settings, and, for a tracked loan, where the history from Actual ends and the projection continues. A loan that cannot be calculated says why, in plain words.

If the figures differ from your lender’s, press Copy diagnostics at the bottom and paste the result into your report. It holds the settings, events, results and the start of the schedule, with amounts and dates, but no loan or account names, no payees, no Notes and no ids. Show what will be copied lets you read it first.

Calculation method and day count

Lenders work out interest in slightly different ways, and a small difference adds up over years. The defaults suit most loans: daily interest, a level payment and the Actual/365 Fixed day count. Set the Day count method beside the interest rate (the i beside it opens the guide’s Calculation method section); every other convention is under Set calculation method.

Day count	A year is	Common for
Actual/365 Fixed	365 days, every year	Most mortgages and personal loans (the default)
Actual/360	360 days, so slightly more interest	Some bank and Islamic finance products
Actual/Actual (calendar year)	365 or 366 days, by the year	Some lenders

If your lender’s figures differ, compare the interest on one recent statement against the schedule, try the other day counts, check the first repayment date and business-day due dates, and, if they still part, record a lender statement (⋯ menu → Check against lender statement) so Bench continues from the lender’s balance.

When a loan cannot be calculated

A loan whose interest is worked out once per repayment period cannot follow a transaction between repayment dates, a rate change inside a period, or an offset. Bench explains the reason in plain words wherever it appears: Terms & Schedule, the loans list and Needs attention, and the Repayments tab. Each reason is one of three kinds:

Kind	What to do
Day-by-day interest would lift it	Press Calculate interest day by day… in the alert (it asks first). Interest is then worked out each day and still charged with each repayment. If your lender works interest out per period, the figures may differ slightly from its statements. Nothing is saved until you save the loan.
Something in the loan needs changing	Change the date, rate or repayment the message names, for example a repayment that does not cover the interest, or a date with no interest rate.
Not supported yet	The kind of schedule cannot be calculated yet, for example repayments that are not on a regular schedule.

A loan linked to Actual with once-per-period interest shows the same offer on Link to Actual, because payments between repayment dates are normal when tracking real transactions. Saving a loan, or its assumptions, is refused with the same explanation when once-per-period interest cannot follow them.

Link to Actual

Create the loan’s account in Actual first: it must be off budget and hold only this loan. Then, on Link to Actual:

Loan and its account: the name, the kind of loan and the off-budget account. If the loan has an offset account, choose that account too.
Repayments: transfers into the loan account count by themselves. If you record repayments as an expense in a bank account instead, add a payment rule that finds them (up to 10 rules).
Interest: Split each repayment (the usual choice) or Lender charges interest when the lender’s own interest rows arrive in the loan account. Choose the interest category, the loan payment category, and what to add to each line’s Notes (#interest on the interest line by default).
Tracking start: the first installment Bench tracks, by installment number or due date. Earlier installments count as paid as contracted and are never matched or reported missing.
Starting balance: the balance owed at the tracking start, from the calculation or from a lender statement.
Advanced: Ignore differences up to (rounding) and Mark missing after (days late; 5 by default).

Tracking starts at installment 1 by default. When the account begins with an opening balance part-way through the loan, Bench suggests the first installment after that opening; choose the suggestion or enter a different installment. The account scan never changes your choice. Bench compares the starting balance with Actual’s loan account just before that installment; if they differ by more than the tolerance, Repayments starts with one Opening adjustment you can apply or skip.

How each interest choice appears in Financial Insights: with Split each repayment, the interest and fees are categorized lines, so they are Spent through their category and the repayment transfer is the principal. With Lender charges interest, the lender’s interest and fee rows sit in the off-budget loan account with no category; Bench counts them in Spent as interest and fees charged by the lender, and the principal repaid is what was paid into the loan less those charges. Both choices give the same Spent, principal and interest for the same loan. A loan that is not tracked here is read from its account alone: what was paid in is shown as principal, its interest is not identified, and entries the lender charged show as other entries in a loan account, outside Spent.

Tracking is for term loans you owe, in a 2-decimal currency for now. A line of credit, a loan you made to someone else, or a loan in a currency with another number of decimals stays a calculation in Terms & Schedule.

Repayments

Repayments lists every installment from the tracking start, newest first, matched to the payment that paid it, with what Bench would write. The figures above the list show Owed in Actual, Bench expects (and whether it agrees), the Next payment (the next installment nothing has paid) and what is To do.

Status	Means	What to do
Recorded	Actual already holds this installment as principal and interest	Nothing
Unrecorded	Paid, but still one whole payment in Actual	Apply: one write splits it
Check	Something needs a look: two payments could be it, a short payment, or Actual’s balance has parted from the calculation	Open it and choose
Missing	Due more than the Mark missing after days ago, and no payment found	Pay it, or choose the payment if Bench missed it
Upcoming	Not due yet	Nothing

A payment already split in Actual, with one principal transfer to the loan account and an interest line, is recognized as Recorded using Actual’s own amounts. Click a row, or press Enter, to open the details panel: it shows the payment in Actual, the split Bench calculated (change the principal and the interest follows), each line’s Notes, and what the loan looks like after Apply. Step through rows with the arrows or ↑ ↓. Where the interest recorded in Actual differs from Bench’s calculation, the interest is marked with an i that says by how much, and the panel shows both figures. Bench uses the recorded principal, interest and fees for later repayments, while checking cumulative differences against a separate calculation. A recorded rounding difference therefore does not leave the working balance a few cents away from the recorded loan history. If a recorded split needs a drift review, the summary says so.

Apply on a row splits that payment. Tick rows and apply the selection, or use Apply all Unrecorded: they run in date order and stop at the first that does not apply.
Undo split puts a payment back to exactly what it was; Edit split changes the amounts of a split already in Actual. Each is one write, like Apply.
Not this payment (the row’s ⋯ menu) excludes a payment from matching any installment of this loan. To reverse it, open Ignored payments above the table and select Restore. A nearby ignored payment can also be restored in a missing or upcoming installment’s details. Bench can then match it again; no transaction is changed in Actual.
Export CSV (above the table) saves the rows you see, with the payment, principal, interest in Actual, interest calculated by Bench, the difference between them, the balance and the status.
Refresh after you import from your bank; new payments appear as Unrecorded.
The pills above the list filter by status (Unrecorded, Check, Missing, Recorded), with a count beside each.

Loan Ledger

The Loan Ledger is the loan account in Actual, row for row, with what each row is. Its balance is the debt Actual shows, and the calculation in Terms & Schedule follows it up to today.

Type	What it is	Effect on the calculation
Loan received	The money paid out at the start	The opening balance
Opening balance	A starting balance part-way through the loan	The opening balance
Repayment	The loan side of an installment (the whole payment until it is split)	Pays an installment
Extra principal	Money paid in on top of the installments	Lowers the balance from its date
Draw	Money taken out again, such as a redraw or top-up	Raises the balance
Fee	A charge added to the loan	Raises the balance
Interest charged	The lender’s own interest row (Lender charges interest)	Paid by the repayments
Adjustment	A correction, such as the opening adjustment	Sets the balance right
Unclassified	Bench cannot tell	Left out until you choose a type

A type in italics, suggested is Bench’s guess; choose one to confirm it. Types are saved in Bench only. Add entry adds an adjustment row or records a lender statement; the pencil edits a row’s Notes, which is written to Actual. An unclassified row that adds to the debt is left out of the calculation, so Bench and Actual drift apart: make a top-up a Draw and a correction an Adjustment.

Linked Assets

Linked Assets shows the assets this loan financed, such as a home or a car, with your share of the loan for each. Links are made from the asset, in Assets → Linked Loans; Bench then shows the asset’s value, your allocated debt and your equity side by side.

What Bench writes

Bench writes to Actual only when you press Apply, Undo split, Edit split or Save Notes. Saving the loan, its types, payment rules and lender statements never writes to Actual.

Action	In Actual
Apply (a split)	The payment becomes a split: a principal transfer plus an interest line. The loan-side row follows the principal.
Apply (opening adjustment)	One row in the loan account, with the Notes “Opening adjustment”.
Undo split	The payment goes back to exactly what it was before.
Edit split	The split’s line amounts change.
Save Notes (Loan Ledger)	That transaction’s Notes.

Bench syncs with Actual before every Apply, writes one change at a time, and checks each one against Actual afterwards. If a check fails, nothing else runs. If the connection drops during an Apply, a red banner names the installment and stops further writes: check that payment in Actual, then press The change is in Actual or It isn’t. Bench never repeats an interrupted write by itself, and never changes a reconciled transaction; unlock it in Actual first if it needs to be split. Archived loans are read-only.

Deleting and recreating a loan

Archiving a loan keeps its history. Delete permanently on an archived loan, after you confirm its name, deletes the loan’s Bench records and leaves its Actual transactions as they are. A recreated loan reads its loan account again.

Your edits and today’s date

Edits to a loan that is not saved yet stay in this browser tab only, and are lost if you reload the page. Save the loan to keep it. If a saved loan changes while you are editing it, Bench keeps your edits and asks you to reload the saved version before saving over it.

Bench works out today from your computer’s calendar, including just after midnight.