Accounting w/Excel - how to track Principal payment (not Schedule E expense)

[Jeremy T.]

So I tried QuickBooks and Buildium, both great and snazzy but ultimately using Excel is just faster and with Office 365 I literally create a clear audit trail (my job has me working with auditors everyday...) by inputting all transactions and including a hyperlink to where the bill/receipt/pdf, etc. is located on OneDrive. etc. etc. I'll post my system later once I answer this question and make sure it's all pretty close to following the right rules,...  but here goes - 

So my Excel spreadsheet tracks all business activities according to where it falls on IRS Schedule E - that is rents received or one of the items in the expense category. Problem is, I don't know where to put "principal" because while I want my spreadsheet to pop out what's needed for my CPA I also want to see the end of the day cash in and cash out net. Currently, I am categorizing it as an Asset (choices: Asset, Expense, Income) and leave it blank in my column that has the Schedule E choices. 

Is there a better way?

[Kenneth LaVoie]

...also Quickbooks has a feature where you can attach scanned receipts to each check as well, and it stores this copy in its own folder. (you can also attach any document to clients, vendors, etc. like contracts, leases, W-2's etc. etc. etc. Add to this, you can export QB as extraordinarily complex excel docs.  Sorry nothing directly helpful to your question. Just wanted to chime in with the "attachment" feature.