Deleted Debt Account

I refinanced my home loan for a lower interest rate, so I deleted my old mortgage debt account and created a new one to make payments to. The old debt account deleted correctly, however when I go to my reports screen and look at my debt, it still tallies both the old and new debts together. I have a feeling I needed to pay off the old one first, before deleting. However, now that I already skipped the step, how do I go back and update the debt progress to remove that old debt so I can see an accurate reflection of my accounts?

Hi Jason – If you’d like to remove a Debt Account from view in your Debt Progress Report, what you’ll have to do is delete all transactions in your household that are connected to that now-deleted Account. Once they’re all removed, it should vanish from that Report.

Thank you!

What will happen to the money that was used to pay those transactions? For example, we selected checking as the payment account to use. Will it put that money back into the checking balance?

That’s correct. Deleting the payment will reverse its effects (regardless of the fact that the original Debt Account and maybe Envelope are deleted), and so the Checking Account you paid from will have its balance increase by the payment amount.

I THINK I know a workaround that will solve this, but it will take a few steps. PLEASE see if the admins (@Alex) think this would work before you try it!! (I know they’re busy today with the glitch from the update but they’re really good about getting back to questions on this forum)
First, as Alex mentioned, the transactions from the deleted account still exist in Goodbudget. If you were to change the final payment on the old mortgage to the total amount due, I think it would effectively take that balance to zero BUT it would also (presumably, lol) overdraft your payment account and mortgage envelope by A LOT. In order to fix that, you’ll have to add that income back into the checking account as a “Fill from New Income” for the same amount.
Now I THINK your old debt should be gone, your checking account and envelope will go hard negative and then bounce back up to normal, and your new mortgage will be an accurate debt and show up in your records.
This is SUPER HYPOTHETICAL though, so hopefully the admins will either confirm or shoot it all the way down before you do anything that will really mess up your budget. I tried it in my own “sandbox” account but I couldn’t replicate what you’re seeing so I can’t say whether it would work or not. But here’s hoping!

If I’m understanding your explanation correctly, I don’t quite that would work, unfortunately, as a paid off Debt Account will still appear in the Report :frowning:

It is true that doing that would more or less “remove” it from view on the Progress Report in that its balance would be zero and the line wouldn’t stack with the other Account, but it would still appear as a line and selectable option, so if the old one is completely unwanted, deleting the transactions is probably the preferred route!

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Thank you both. I’ll go back and delete the old transactions, then adjust my account accordingly. That sounds like the permanent fix.