Home Loan Manager - User Manual

Table of Contents > Software Overview

Software Overview

Home Loan Manager Pro has been specially designed to work with the loan details provided to you by your lender. Using the information on your mortgage statements, the software will allow you keep an accurate record of all your loans, instantly check the accuracy of your interest charges, summarize your expenses, and help you plan for the future.



Keep Accurate Records
With Home Loan Manager you can keep an accurate record of all your loans in the one convenient location. Capture interest rate changes, balances, statement information, and all types of transactions including extra repayments, fees, taxes, and interest charges.

The software will let you enter as much or as little historical information as you want. When you first start using Home Loan Manager we recommend that you start with your newest statement first, and then add your older statements at a later date. This is particularly useful if you want to start by importing your transactions and your Internet banking site only contains the latest information.


Check For Errors
Not sure if your lender's interest calculations are correct? Want to find out if you are receiving the full benefit of your offset account and any extra repayments you've made? The following reports have been designed to check your mortgage and loans for bank errors:

	The Balance Checker will confirm that all your transactions and balances have been correctly processed by the bank.
	The Interest Checker (and Offset Account Checker) will quickly highlights any errors in the interest charges of your loans.
	If your lender has incorrectly calculated your interest, The Refund Calculator (and Error Compounder) will display the refunds you are due, by calculating the total compounding cost of each error.
	The Daily Interest Report will show a breakdown of the interest you are being charged on each loan.

Review Your Costs
You can get an instant picture of what your loans are costing you, statement-to-statement and year-to-year, by letting the mortgage software automatically group and categorize the transactions on your statements. The following reports will help you discover what your loans are costing you:

	The Yearly Totals Report will show you the total costs of your loans for ANY year.
	The Yearly Comparison Report will compare totals between two different years.
	The Statement Comparison Report will compare totals between to different statements.

Plan For The Future
Worried about interest rate rises? Want to find out how to pay off your mortgage sooner? The following reports will give you answers and keep you informed as you circumstances change:

	The Increased Repayments Report will allow you to work out how much you can save over the life of your loan, by increasing your mortgage repayments.
	The Interest Rate Rise Report will let you prepare for interest rate rises, by showing you the impact on your repayments, and total cost to your loan.
	The Detailed Payout Plan will let you work out how many years you can afford to cut off your loan, and how much you will save in interest charges.

Be Debt Free Sooner
Do you want to cut years off your mortgage and save thousands? Lock in your target and we'll help you every step of the way:

Your Payout Plan lets you decide how quickly you would like to pay off your mortgage, and then shows you exactly what you have to do to achieve it. It works with your current balance and is automatically updated every time you enter your latest loan details, keeping you on track every step of the way.

Importing Transactions

To save you manually typing in all your historical details, if you have access to your transactions via your Internet banking website (or you currently have them in a spreadsheet), the import wizard will help you load them in seconds

Refer to the importing transactions help topic for more information.

Transaction Categories

To help you get the most out of the loan information you enter into Home Loan Manager Pro, you can allocate categories to your transactions (for example, a transaction may be a FEE, or an INTEREST charge, or a DEPOSIT, or a WITHDRAWAL, etc). You can use the default list of categories, or you can set up your own.

Category Auto-Matching

To save you manually allocating categories to every transaction, Home Loan Manager Pro provides you with a Category Auto-Matching tool. This tool will automatically allocate categories to new transactions by examining categories you allocated in the past, and by using any category wildcard patterns you set up.

Refer to the category auto matching help topic for more information.

Workbooks

Home Loan Manager Pro stores all your loan information in a file on your computer called a workbook (with a file extension of .hlnn). Normally you would set up one workbook with all your loans in it, however there is no limit to the number of workbooks you can create.

What Next?

Open the sample workbook and take the software for a test drive. To find a sample account that is similar to your own loan, refer to the sample workbook help topic for a description of each of the accounts in the workbook.

For step-by-step instructions on setting up your own workbook, adding a loan, and entering your first statement, refer to the entering your loan details help topic.