Getting Started

Signing in

The platform uses a standard sign-in screen with Sign In, Sign Up, and Forgot your password? options. If you're setting up a brand-new institution, use Sign Up to create the first account, which becomes that institution's Admin.

Joining an existing institution

If your institution is already on the platform, don't create a new one — join it instead:

1. Ask an existing Admin or Branch Manager for the Self-signup instructions. They can find these from the Team menu → Self-signup instructions, which includes your institution's unique Institution ID.
2. Sign up with your own email address.
3. During setup, choose Join existing institution and enter the Institution ID you were given.

Once you submit, your account is created with Pending status. You won't be able to use the platform yet — an Admin or Branch Manager needs to review your request on the Team page (Pending tab), assign you a role and branch, and approve you.

Signed up as a new institution by mistake?

If you used Sign Up without choosing Join existing institution (or entered the wrong Institution ID), you become the Admin of a brand-new, separate institution — even if you gave it the same name as the one you meant to join. It has no connection to the real institution, and there is no way to convert that Admin account into a team member of a different institution afterward; institution owners/Admins can't be transferred or merged between institutions.

To fix this, sign up again using a different email address, and this time select Join existing institution and enter the correct Institution ID (get it from your Admin or Branch Manager — see Team Management). You can leave the mistakenly-created institution as is; it isn't linked to your correct account.

Account status

Your account can be in one of these states:

Finding your way around

Once you're active and signed in, you land on the Dashboard. Two things drive what you see from here on: your role (see Roles & Permissions) and, for some roles, your branch.

Start Here: the Getting started guide

Start Here is a short list of the steps that matter most for your role, with a progress bar, a percentage and a one-line instruction for each step. Finish the list and you can run the everyday work of a lending business from start to finish. You'll find it in two places:

• The first entry in the side menu, above the Dashboard, highlighted so you can't miss it. It opens the full guide on a page of its own.
• A small card at the top of the Dashboard, which shows how far along you are and just the next step to do, with a button for it and a View the full guide → link to the page.

On your first login you land on Start Here instead of the Dashboard — once. After that you land on the Dashboard as usual, and Start Here is a click away in the menu. (This is for new accounts. If you've been using LoanTabs for a while, you won't be sent there.)

• A list for your job. An Admin's list runs from setting up the business (a logo for receipts, a cash account, email notifications) through loan products, team members and approval rules, to lending and collecting (a first borrower, loan, approval and repayment) and keeping on top of it (an expense, a report, the AI assistant). A Branch Manager's and a Loan Officer's lists cover what they do day to day — for example a Loan Officer's includes Submit a loan for approval. Every other role gets a short Find your way around list.
• Only what you can do. A step appears only if your role may do it on your plan, so the percentage is always out of things you can actually finish. If your Admin changes what a role can do in Admin › User Permissions (see Roles & Permissions), the list changes with it.
• Steps tick themselves. Do the work anywhere in the app — add a borrower from the Borrowers page, record a payment on a loan — and the step is ticked next time you look. Steps that are about opening a page (such as a report) tick when you open it. A ticked step stays ticked.
• Questions to ask the AI assistant. The Ask the AI assistant step suggests questions that suit your job — an Admin is shown questions about collections and lending, a Branch Manager about approvals and how their officers are doing, a Loan Officer about loans coming due and payments received.
• START HERE. Until you have finished your first step the Dashboard card says START HERE; after that it says CONTINUE and points at your next step.
• What you can do. Press Open (or Try it) to go straight to the right page. Press Skip on a step that doesn't apply to you — for example a sole owner with no team to add — and it stops counting towards your percentage. Learn more (on the full page) opens the matching help guide. Hide guide on the Dashboard card puts the card away.
• Reminders. If you haven't finished, a slim Finish setting up strip may appear under the top bar on the main work pages (Borrowers, Loans, Reports and similar) to point you at your next step. It appears at most once per page in a session and only a few times, never on a form, and if you close it with the × it stays away for three days.
• Getting the card back. If you hid the Dashboard card, press Show it on the Start Here page or on Help & Support. Start Here itself is always in the menu.
• It follows you. Your progress is saved on your own account, so it is the same on your phone and your laptop.

The guide isn't shown while a free trial or subscription has lapsed — renew from Billing (see Billing) and it returns.

#### Advanced features

When the basics are running, Admins and Branch Managers see an Advanced features → link at the bottom of the Start Here page. It opens a second guide, with its own progress, for the features a growing business reaches for next: penalty types, day control, custom fields, extra branches, SMS alerts and webhooks, collateral and guarantors, group lending (on the plans that include it), manual journals and period close, and — for a Branch Manager — the late-loan, daily-collection and officer-scorecard reports. Every step in it can be skipped; none are required. You can also find it by typing advanced features in the top-bar search or asking the AI assistant.

The Dashboard

The Dashboard opens with a row of quick links, then (if there's anything waiting) a strip telling you how many loans are awaiting approval, with a link to review them. Below that:

• Portfolio figures — active loans, outstanding principal, what's been disbursed this month, and total loans issued.
• Risk figures — total arrears, PAR 30, loans overdue past maturity, and missed payments.
• Due for Collection — loans due today or in the next 7 days, with the borrower's phone number for a quick call (visible if you can view Reports), and Highest Arrears — your worst-behind loans, both linking through to the full report.
• Recently Disbursed and Maturing in 30 Days, so you can see what's just gone out and what's coming due.
• Charts for the portfolio's status breakdown and aging.

A Loan Officer sees only their own portfolio here — the same set of loans as the Loans list. The figures stay exactly as they were until you make a change yourself, switch days, or click Refresh — moving between the Dashboard and another page and back doesn't reload them.

The top bar

Across the top of every screen you'll find:

• Your institution's name
• A Change Branch option — in practice this only works for Admins today (see Branches). Everyone else, including Loan Officers, Branch Managers, and Cashiers, works within their assigned branch.
• A Day open / Day closed badge, if your Admin has switched on the day lock for your branch (see Day Control)
• A search box (see Searching from the top bar, below)
• Help, Apps, and an Ask LoanTabs AI icon that opens the AI assistant (see Using LoanTabs AI)
• Notifications (with an unread badge)
• Settings
• A light/dark mode toggle (see below)
• Your account menu, with Sign Out

Hover over any of these icons to see what it does.

Searching from the top bar

The search box in the top bar finds things across the app so you don't have to go through the menu. On a wide screen it is a box in the middle of the bar; on a narrower screen it is a search icon that opens the search over the page.

Type at least two characters — a name, a loan number, a group number, a phone number or ID number, or part of a report or page name. Results are grouped under headings and appear as you type:

• Records — Borrowers, Loans, Loan drafts, Groups, Guarantors, Collateral, Team and Cash accounts. An Admin also finds Loan products, Loan fees and Penalty types.
• Pages and reports — every page and report you are allowed to open, such as Day control or Aging analysis.
• Help — the guides in this documentation.

Use the up and down arrow keys to move through the results and Enter to open the highlighted one; the best match is highlighted first. Esc closes the results (press it again to clear the box), and the cancel icon in the box clears what you typed.

You only see what you could open anyway: each kind of record appears only if your role may view it, and a Loan Officer finds only their own borrowers, loans, loan drafts and groups. Search works on the lists the app has loaded, and loads the ones it is missing the first time you search, so the first search after signing in can take a moment to fill in. Active and closed loans are both searched, but loans are loaded 25 at a time — the same as the search box on the Loans page — so a loan that hasn't been loaded yet may not appear; if you can't find one, open Loans and search there.

Light and dark mode

The app opens in light mode. To switch, click the sun/moon icon in the top bar. The icon shows the mode you'll switch to. Your choice is remembered on that browser, so on a new browser or device you'll start in light mode again.

The side menu

The main menu adapts to your role. The items you might see, in order, are:

• Start Here — the Getting started guide (see above), highlighted at the top of the menu
• Dashboard
• Notifications
• Borrowers — View Borrowers, Create Borrower, Guarantors, Collateral
• Groups — lending groups, their loans and meetings (see Group Lending)
• Loans — Active Loans, Closed Loans, Group Loans, Repayments, Create Loan, Loan Drafts
• Team — View Team (for the roles that can see the team), and (for roles that manage staff) Add Team Member and Self-signup instructions
• Accounting — Cash Ledger, Cash Accounts, Assets, Expenses, Other Income, Profit / Loss
• Reports — visible to Admin, Branch Manager, Accountant, Auditor, Risk Analyst, Credit Committee, and Viewer (and, for the collections reports only, Collections Officer)
• Billing
• Admin — Admins only. Your institution's control panel: loan products, fees, penalty types, loan approval, branches, custom fields, notifications, and more (see Admin Configuration)
• Settings — your personal profile (see Settings)

If you don't see a menu item you expect, it's most likely gated to a different role — check Roles & Permissions, or ask your institution's Admin.