Loans

This is the core of the platform: creating a loan, getting it approved, disbursing the funds, and managing it through to close.

The loan lifecycle, in brief

A loan starts as a draft, moves through approval, and is disbursed automatically the moment it has all the sign-offs it needs. From there it's active until it's fully repaid (closed), written off, or voided.

On the loans list, you'll see a more descriptive status rather than the raw lifecycle stage:

Before a loan reaches one of these, it goes through its own approval stages, shown as a progress ribbon on the loan:

1. Draft — being put together, not yet submitted
2. Submitted / In Review — waiting on one or more approvers
3. Rejected — sent back with a reason; use Return to Draft to fix it and resubmit
4. Approved — converted to an active loan and disbursed

Creating a loan

Go to Loans → Create Loan. First pick the borrower (only active borrowers appear here; Loan Officers only see borrowers assigned to them). Then choose how to build the loan:

• Use Blank Form — fill in every term yourself
• Use Loan Product Template — start from a pre-configured product

Loan terms you'll set

Whichever path you choose, you're working with the same underlying terms:

• Principal Amount
• Interest Method — Flat, Reducing Balance (Equal Installments or Equal Principal), Interest-Only, or Compound Interest (Accrued or Equal Installments)
• Interest Type — Percentage or Fixed Amount — and an Interest Rate/Amount with a period (per day/week/month/year/loan)
• Loan Start Date
• Loan Duration and its period (days/weeks/months/years)
• Repayment Frequency — Interval Based, Lump Sum, Set Days of the Week, or Set Dates of the Month
• Loan Fees — none, your institution's pre-defined fees, or a custom fee for this loan alone (see Fees on a loan, below)

If your Admin has defined custom fields for loans (Admin → Custom Fields), they appear in a Custom Fields section at the bottom of the form, and any marked required must be filled in before you can save. They're stored with the loan and can be changed later from its Custom Fields tab.

Fees on a loan

In the Loan Fees part of the form, choose one of:

• No Loan Fees
• Use Pre-defined Loan Fees — pick one or more of the fees your Admin set up under Admin → Loan Fees. Each keeps its own category and calculation (see Admin Configuration).
• Enter a Custom Fee — a one-off fee for this loan only. Give it a Name (for example Processing Fee or Insurance), an Amount, and choose How Is This Fee Settled?:

A fee with no name is called "Custom fee". If you charge the same fee often, create it under Admin → Loan Fees instead, so it can be picked in one click and attached to loan products.

Each fee is kept on the loan by name, amount and category, so later changes to a fee type never alter loans already created. The loan schedule lists each fee and, when any fee is deducted, also shows Net Cash to Borrower — the principal less the deducted fees. When a loan uses a Loan Product, its fees come from the product and can't be changed on the loan, so use Use Blank Form for a loan that needs a custom fee.

Using a Loan Product

A Loan Product is a template an Admin sets up in advance (under Admin → Loan Products) with default terms, allowed ranges, and attached fees. When you select one:

• Fields the product locks down are pre-filled and can't be changed.
• Fields the product allows editing on can still be adjusted, but only within the product's configured minimum/maximum.
• Any fees attached to the product are added automatically, and can't be changed on the loan.

This is the faster path when your institution has standardized loan types, since most of the decision-making is already baked into the product.

Getting a loan approved

Every loan (other than the fast-path described below) needs sign-off before it disburses. Your institution configures which roles must approve, under Admin → Loan Approval — but two rules always hold:

• The Branch Manager is always a required approver and can't be removed from the requirement.
• Admin can approve anything, at any time, regardless of configuration.

Beyond that, an institution can require additional roles to sign off (Loan Officer, Credit Committee, Accountant, Auditor, Collections Officer, Risk Analyst). A Cashier is deliberately not offered: whoever handles the cash shouldn't also sign off the loan it pays out. Each required role can only be signed off by someone holding that exact role — a Branch Manager's authority doesn't let them sign on behalf of, say, a required Credit Committee line.

To approve or reject, open the loan's Approval tab. Each required role has its own row with Approve / Reject actions.

• Approving the last required signature asks you to pick a Principal Account (and a Loan Fees Account, if the loan has fees) — these are the accounts the funds will move through — and disburses the loan immediately.
• If other approvers still need to sign, you'll be told the loan will wait for them before it disburses.
• Rejecting sends the loan back to Draft with your reason attached, so the creator can fix it and resubmit.

Fast path for small teams

If you're an Admin or Branch Manager creating a loan and nobody else at your branch holds any of the required approver roles, there's nothing to wait on — the button reads Create Loan instead of Submit for Approval, and clicking it takes you straight to the account-selection step, creating and disbursing the loan in one action.

Submitting or approving several drafts at once

On Loans → Loan Drafts every row has a checkbox, so you can act on many drafts in one go instead of opening each one. Tick the drafts you want, then use the buttons above the list. The buttons show how many of the ticked loans they will apply to, and hovering one explains why it is greyed out.

• Submit for Approval — sends the ticked drafts for approval, the same as the single-draft action, and notifies the approvers. After you confirm, only plain Draft loans are sent: loans already In Review, and Rejected ones (return those to Draft and fix them first), are skipped. You need permission to update loans. Once submitted, a draft can no longer be edited by loan officers.
• Approve — signs the ticked loans that are In Review and waiting on you. An Admin can sign any outstanding line; everyone else only the line for their own role. Loans not waiting on you are skipped. A single window lists each loan with the Disbursement account the principal leaves from and, for a loan with fees, the Loan fees account; both start on the branch's default account (or the account an earlier approver chose). Press Approve and disburse. A loan whose last signature you add is disbursed straight away; if other approvers still have to sign, your approval is recorded and the loan waits for them. Each loan is disbursed on its own start date (or the date an earlier approver set); if the branch's day lock applies to you, every loan is dated the open day instead and the window says so (see Day Control). The Approve button only appears if you can approve loans.

Each loan is processed on its own, so one failing doesn't stop the rest. A message afterwards says how many were sent or approved, how many were skipped and how many failed, with the reason. Anything that failed stays ticked so you can fix it and try again.

What happens on disbursement

Disbursement isn't a separate manual step — it happens automatically the instant a loan gets its final approval. Behind the scenes, the principal amount is recorded as a withdrawal from the Principal Account you selected, and if the loan has fees, they're recorded as a deposit into the Loan Fees Account — one deposit covering all of the loan's fees, dated the disbursement date. The Fees Report (see Reports) counts each fee on that date.

Managing a loan after it's active

Open a loan to see its detail page, with these tabs:

• Details — the loan's terms and current numbers
• Contract — the loan's contract, drafted from your contract template, issued for signing, and kept with the signed copy; see Loan contracts
• Files — uploaded documents or links. When a customer applies for a loan in the customer portal, any documents they attach to the application appear here (on the draft, and on the loan once it is approved), described as uploaded by the applicant; click one to open it. You can't delete an applicant's document from here.
• Comments — a running thread of notes about the loan, each stamped with who wrote it. Collections contacts logged from the Delinquency Report appear here too, as ordinary readable comments. Adding a comment is open to Admin, Branch Manager, Loan Officer and Collections Officer.
• Activity — what has happened to the loan, newest first: created, approved, disbursed, payments edited, reversed or deleted, closed or written off — each with who did it, when, and what changed (a reversal shows its reason)
• Approval — the sign-off history described above
• Custom Fields — any extra fields your institution has defined

From the Details tab you can:

• Edit the loan — Admin and Branch Manager only
• View Statement — a combined schedule and payment ledger, exportable to PDF. Its header lists each of the loan's fees on its own, with how it was settled; it doesn't show a combined fee total.
• Manage Payments — see Payments
• Stop Interest / Resume Interest — pauses interest from accruing further (useful for hardship cases or disputes); the button shows when interest was paused and can be resumed at any time
• Write Off Loan — Admin and Branch Manager only, and only while the loan isn't already closed, written off, or voided
• Delete Loan (permanent) — Admin only, and not shown for a closed or written-off loan. On a loan that has recorded payments it tells you to reverse them first; the loan can only be deleted once none are left

Loan contracts

A borrower needs something to sign. Press Draft Contract above the loan schedule while you create a loan (on the live schedule, in View Full, and on a saved draft's schedule), or Generate contract on a loan's Contract tab. The contract is built from your template (see Contract Templates): the borrower, the amount in figures and in words, the interest, the dates, the repayment schedule, any fees, and the guarantors and collateral are filled in from the loan. Pick another template from the list if you need one, and download or print the PDF to check it. What you see is the file that is printed and stored.

• Before the draft is saved, the contract is a preview: it shows the loan's reference as "(assigned on save)", Save to loan asks you to save the draft first, and the guarantors and collateral appear once the draft is saved. Save to loan keeps a version on the loan.
• Blank lines and errors. A detail the loan doesn't have (a borrower with no address, say) prints as a blank line to fill in by hand, and the dialog lists it. A field the template can't fill is an error, and the contract can't be issued until the template is corrected.
• The Contract tab lists the contract's versions, newest first, each numbered from the loan (LN-001/C1, LN-001/C2…) with its status: Draft (still changeable; shows the DRAFT watermark), Issued, Signed, Void or Superseded. Drafting a new version supersedes the earlier drafts and issued versions; a signed contract is never replaced, only voided.
• Issue turns a draft into the final PDF (no watermark) and keeps it on the loan. The wording can't change after that: draft a new version instead.
• Mark as signed records the date and, if you have it, the scan or photo of the signed pages (PDF or an image, up to 10MB). You can attach the signed copy later, or replace it.
• Void (with a reason) and Delete (a draft only) are for a Branch Manager or Admin. A voided contract stays on record.
• Each step appears on the loan's Activity tab. A contract and its signed copy are kept with the loan's files, so deleting the loan removes them too; they don't count towards the ten-file limit and don't appear in the Files tab.
• A closed or written-off loan keeps its contracts but can't have a new one drawn up.

Drafting and issuing a contract is open to Admin, Branch Manager and Loan Officer; an Admin can change that under User Permissions. A contract is a document, not a posting, so the day lock doesn't apply to it.

Writing off a loan

Use Write Off Loan when a loan is uncollectible. Confirming it marks the loan as Written Off as of today, stops any further interest from accruing, and records the balance at the time of write-off for your records. This action can't be undone from the loan screen — once written off, the loan simply shows "Written off on {date}" in place of the action.

Deleting a loan

Delete Loan (permanent) is different from writing off: instead of closing the loan out, it deletes it completely, along with every fee, fine, money transaction, comment and activity entry recorded against it, undoing their effect on any money account in the process. You must give a reason and type DELETE (in capitals) to confirm. The loan disappears from every list and report, as if it had never been created, and you're taken back to Loans. A short record of the deletion — who, when, which loan and the reason — is kept for audit (there is no screen for it yet; ask support if you need it).

This is only available to Admins, and only for a loan that has no recorded payments and isn't closed or written off: once money has been collected or the loan has been closed out, it is part of your financial record and has to stay. The link is also shown on a loan that has payments, but clicking it only tells you that the payments must be reversed before the loan can be deleted (see Payments); a loan whose only payments were reversed can then be deleted. The link isn't shown at all for a closed or written-off loan. Use delete to correct a loan that was created or disbursed in error — not as an alternative to writing off a loan that's simply gone bad, since write-off keeps the full record and delete destroys it.

Removing a loan

Once a loan has been submitted for approval (or created via the fast path), there's no ordinary "delete" action for it. By that point it's already tied to approval sign-offs, and once it disburses, to real account transactions, payments, comments, and files — deleting the loan would leave all of that pointing at nothing, or silently erase the accounting trail behind money that actually moved.

The one exception is a loan still sitting in Draft: since nothing has been approved or disbursed yet, it has nothing else linked to it, so it can be deleted. Open it from Loans → Loan Drafts and delete it from there.

For a loan that's already active and simply needs to come off your books, use Write Off Loan (above) rather than trying to delete it — it closes the loan out while keeping the full record of what happened. Delete Loan (permanent) (also above) is the one true delete for an active loan, but it's a much bigger action: rather than closing the loan out, it erases it and every transaction tied to it, so it is only offered for a loan with no recorded payments, and is meant for correcting a mistake, not for loans that have simply gone bad.

Tools that don't touch a real loan

• Loan Calculator (Loans → Loan Calculator) — a what-if tool for exploring terms and previewing a schedule (with PDF export) without creating or affecting any actual loan or borrower.