As its name suggests, Loan Calculator is intended for calculating payments on loans. If there is one word to describe this tool, that would be “simple”. Its graphic user interface is just a small window in which you need to enter such data as a loan amount, interest rate, loan length and a number of payments per year. Once you have introduced the data, you can press the Calculate Payment button to receive the total payment amount.
Additionally, the application can generate a loan schedule you can view on the screen or export to CVS or PDF. The schedule contains different columns with information about the payment number, principal paid, interest paid, loan balance, total interest and total payment. Since CVS is supported by many spreadsheets, you can make any changes to the resulting file without much effort.
While it is good that it works for multiple types of loans, such a lack of specificity brings about some limitations. In this respect, the tool does not allow calculating payments for different types of loans simultaneously. Just suppose you are paying a mortgage and a student grant at the same time. In such a case, there could be different interest rates for each loan. In any case, it does not allow you to foresee the results of introducing forced payments or contributions and grants, for instance.
All in all, Loan Calculator just simplifies something you could easily do with a spreadsheet application, such as Calc or Excel, and some office skills. Although this is the type of product you would expect to be free, it is only available after you purchase it.
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