This worries me a little: "I also made several payments to "employees" from personal funds to cover business expenses."
You really don't have this in reality, so it seems like you are "playing" at being a business entity. You need actual guidance from your CPA, because that sentence violates a Bunch of regulations.
Either you have Employees, or you don't. Either this is Payroll, or they are not employee and this is Independent Contractors. That means you have to learn how to do that right. The penalty for not properly managing the IC process for purposes of 1099-Misc is $100 per day per name.
Your CPA can help guide you; you seem to be asking about partner loan as Liability, but you didn't tell us if this is a Corporation of some type, an LLC? The tax entity type matters. For this staetment:
"These loan repayment funds are completely different than our owners draw from company profits."
You might not have the correct perspective per the way the IRS will treat it, for instance. That's why asking accounting and tax rule guidance from the QB user forum is not the best idea.
Once your CPA helps you know what these are called, we can help you handle how to enter them. But we don't know your accounting requirements.