Create a liability account for the loan, Other Current Liability for anything due within a year or Long Term Liability for longer, then record the incoming funds as a credit to that account. Each payment afterward splits between the liability (principal) and Interest Expense, never the full amount to one or the other. Here's the full sequence, start to finish.
1. Create the liability account. Open Settings, then Chart of Accounts, then New. Choose Other Current Liabilities if you'll pay it off within 12 months, or Long Term Liabilities if it runs longer, then pick Notes Payable or Loan Payable as the detail type and name it after the lender so it's easy to find later.
2. Record the loan proceeds. If the lender deposited the loan amount into your bank account, go to + New > Bank deposit, select your bank account, and add a line with the loan liability account as the account and the full loan amount. If the loan paid a vendor directly instead of landing in your bank account (a vehicle loan paying a dealer, for instance), use a journal entry instead: debit the relevant asset account and credit the loan liability account for the same amount.
3. Get the amortization schedule from your lender. You need this before you can record payments correctly; it shows exactly how much of each payment is principal versus interest, and that split changes slightly every payment as the balance goes down.
4. Record each payment with a split. Go to + New > Check or Expense, select the account the payment comes from, and add two lines: one to the loan liability account for the principal portion, one to Interest Expense for the interest portion, matching the amortization schedule for that payment.
5. Confirm the liability balance matches the lender's statement periodically. Run a Balance Sheet or check the account directly in Chart of Accounts; the remaining balance should track your amortization schedule's outstanding principal, not the full loan amount still sitting there after payments.
The single most common mistake is recording the whole payment to the loan liability account, or the whole thing to Interest Expense, instead of splitting it. Either one makes the loan balance wrong on the balance sheet and overstates or understates interest expense on the profit and loss, and it compounds every single payment until someone catches it.
The split itself isn't hard once you have the amortization schedule in hand; it's remembering to check that schedule every single payment, since the principal and interest amounts shift slightly each time, rather than reusing last month's numbers out of habit.
For a single loan, that's a minor monthly task. For a business carrying several loans, equipment financing, a line of credit, a vehicle loan, each with its own schedule, it's a real recurring reconciliation job that someone has to stay on top of every payment cycle.
Once a loan's schedule is loaded in, each payment posts with the correct principal-and-interest split automatically, instead of someone checking the schedule by hand every cycle and risking a wrong split.
For a business carrying several loans at once, we match what QuickBooks shows as the remaining balance against each lender's actual statement automatically, flagging anything that's drifted instead of waiting for someone to notice at year-end.
Those are two patterns. Tell us how many loans you're carrying and how the split currently gets calculated, and we'll tell you if it can run itself.
Tell us how many loans you're tracking and where the amortization numbers actually come from, and we'll tell you whether that split can post itself correctly every time. Loan tracking is one example of manual bookkeeping; whatever else is eating time the same way is worth the same question.
Let's talk →You can categorize the full payment to the loan liability account as a rough placeholder, but it will overstate how much principal you've actually paid down and won't show any interest expense at all. It's worth getting the real split from your lender's amortization schedule before your books get far enough off that fixing it later takes real work.
Two separate things happen at once: the vehicle itself goes on your books as a Fixed Asset at its purchase price, and the loan that financed it goes on as a liability the same way any other loan does. If the dealer financed the purchase directly rather than depositing cash to your account, a journal entry debiting the Fixed Asset account and crediting the loan liability account books both sides in one step.
Record the funds received as a liability like any other loan while it's outstanding. If some or all of it is later forgiven, that forgiven portion gets moved out of the liability account and into an income account (commonly something like "PPP Loan Forgiveness" or "Other Income"), since forgiven debt is treated as income, not as a loan payment.
That's the mirror image on your books: instead of a liability, it's an asset. Create an Other Current Asset (or Long Term Asset) account, something like "Loan Receivable," and record the funds you sent out as a credit to your bank account and a debit to that asset account. Payments coming back in reduce that asset and, if there's interest, add interest income.