If one payment covers more than one loan — the way most student-loan servicers bill — you can record it the way it actually happened. One transaction, matching the single debit on your statement, with each loan's share written against that loan.
You no longer need to invent several transactions to make the numbers work.
Watch it
Why it matters when your rates differ
Every loan is charged its own interest before anything comes off the balance. So the same dollar does different work depending on which loan it lands on, and recording one lump against a single loan leaves the others frozen — and your total debt looking better than it is.
In the walkthrough, a $450 payment splits $300 / $150 across two loans:
| Loan | Rate | Balance | You paid | Interest | New balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Graduate | 6.80% | $12,400.00 | $300.00 | $70.27 | $12,170.27 |
| Undergraduate | 3.20% | $8,150.00 | $150.00 | $21.73 | $8,021.73 |
The $300 cleared $229.73 of principal; the $150 cleared $128.27. Not proportional — because the higher-rate loan took more interest first. That difference is the whole reason to record the split rather than the lump.
How to do it
- Go to Transactions and tap Add Transaction. One transaction, matching the one debit your bank shows.
- Enter the full amount of the payment — the whole thing, not one loan's share.
- Add a description and pick the category you use for loan payments. One category is fine, however many loans the payment covers.
- Open the Accounts section. If the money left a checking or savings account you track, set Linked asset account to it — that balance drops by the full payment.
- Tap Allocate to loans. It sits to the right of the Linked debt account label. If it's greyed out, the line underneath says why — usually that the category in step 3 isn't set to an expense category yet. It replaces the single debt-account picker, because the payment is going to more than one.
- Choose each loan and enter its share. Every row shows the loan's name and its interest rate underneath, so similarly-named loans are easy to tell apart.
- Use + Add loan for a third or fourth. Remove a row with the × beside it.
- Check the running tally, then save. It sits under the rows and turns green once the shares add up to the payment. Save stays switched off until they do.
What you'll see afterwards
- In your transactions list, the row carries a × 2 loans tag, so you can tell at a glance which payments were split.
- On the Debt page, each loan lists the payment under its own linked payments — showing that loan's share rather than the full amount, with the running balance after it.
- In your payoff projections and net worth, every loan now moves on schedule instead of sitting still, so the forecast reflects what you're actually paying down.
Worth knowing
- The shares have to add up exactly. BudgetLabs won't quietly adjust a figure for you, and it won't let a payment save with part of it unaccounted for.
- You need at least two debt accounts for the option to appear. If your loans aren't set up separately yet, add them on the Debt page first, each with its own rate.
- One category can cover every loan. A category's Linked Debt Account names a single account, so for a "Student Loans" category that covers four of them, leave it on No linked debt account and split each payment as you record it. If you do leave a loan linked there, it just prefills the picker — tapping Allocate to loans clears it, and the split wins.
- One row per loan. If a loan should get more, edit its amount rather than adding it twice.
- You can change it later. Reopen the transaction and the split is still there to edit. Clearing every row turns it back into an ordinary single-loan payment.
Not the same as splitting across categories
Splitting a transaction across budget categories answers a different question — which budget lines pay for it. Splitting across loans answers which debts received it. A single payment can do both at once: one category, several loans, or several of each. See Transactions for the category side.