'Loans': Asset or Expense?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

The loans are accounts of type "asset". Money you lend out is thus a 
transfer between two asset accounts and so are repayments of principle. 
Interest payments, if any, are income, and portions of loans written off 
as "bad debt" an expense (note -- might not be for tax purposes which is 
likely to treat debt forgiveness of friends and kin as a gift).

As suggested you should have one account per loan. If useful/important 
for you to be able to see at a glance how much the total balance is then 
you have the individual loan accounts as children of a "loans" account.

Michael