SACCO Workspace

The SACCO add-on is for institutions that take savings and sell shares to their members — a savings and credit co-operative. It adds member savings accounts, share accounts, interest, dividends, meetings and loans backed by savings, all in one place: SACCO in the menu. It sits beside your lending; it never changes how your loans, borrowers, payments or reports work.

Who has SACCO

SACCO is included in the free trial and in the Corporate and Enterprise plans. It is not part of Pro. If your plan changes, nothing you recorded is lost: the SACCO screens are hidden while the plan does not include it, your members' balances and your books stay exactly as they were, and everything comes back when the plan includes SACCO again.

An administrator can also turn SACCO off and on under Admin → SACCO. Turning it off hides the SACCO screens and stops anything new being recorded; it deletes nothing and does not change a cash balance or a report. Turn it on again and everything is there.

The SACCO hub

SACCO in the menu opens a hub of cards. You see a card only when your role may use that page.

• Members & accounts — Members.
• Money — Interest and Dividends.
• Governance — Meetings.
• Reports — Savings balances, Savings activity, Share register, Interest paid, Dormant accounts, Meeting attendance and Loan coverage.
• Setup — Savings products, Membership fees, Settings and Import balances.

Above the cards the hub shows the SACCO at a glance — your members, what they hold in savings and share capital in the branch you are working in, the next meeting and the latest dividend — and SACCO Start Here, which walks you through the setup below and ticks itself off (see the next section).

SACCO Start Here

The first time you open SACCO you land on SACCO Start Here: a short list of the steps that matter most for your role, in the order that works best. Each step has an Open button that takes you to the right page and ticks itself once you have done it — you never tick anything by hand. A step that does not apply to you can be skipped where it shows a Skip link.

After that first visit the top of the SACCO hub shows a small card instead: how far along you are, the next step with its button, and View the full guide →. Hide guide puts the card away; Show SACCO Start Here brings it back. You can also find the guide by searching for "SACCO Start Here" or asking the AI assistant.

You only see steps your role can do:

• Administrator — set your share price and default cash account, review the savings products, set up membership fees, bring in existing balances, then enrol a member, open an account, take a deposit and a withdrawal, sell shares and open a savings report.
• Branch manager — the same desk work, plus approving members, taking a mistaken entry back and scheduling a meeting.
• Cashier — the desk: enrol a member, open an account, deposits, withdrawals, transfers, shares, membership-fee payments, and opening a member's account and statement.
• Loan officer — enrol a member, check what a member has saved, the loan coverage report, and securing a loan with savings.
• Everyone else — a short tour of the Members page, the savings reports, the share register, dividends and meetings that their role may open, and these help guides.

When the list is complete, administrators and branch managers are offered Advanced features →: a second list for what a SACCO grows into — choosing when interest starts and paying it, dormant accounts, declaring and paying a dividend, arranging meetings and recording minutes, loans backed by savings, membership fees and showing members their savings in the customer portal. None of it is required.

Setting up

Do these once, in this order. Only an administrator can change settings and products.

1. Settings — set the share price, the default cash account (the cash account deposits and withdrawals use unless the person at the desk picks another), the financial year end, and the number prefixes for members, accounts and receipts. See Reports, Roles and Settings.
2. Savings products — create at least one savings product: its interest rate, minimum balance, limits and fees. See Savings and Shares.
3. Members — enrol your members and open their accounts (below).
4. Import balances — if members already held savings before you started using the system, bring those in once from a CSV.

Members

Open SACCO → Members. The list has tabs for the member statuses, a search box, and bulk actions to change the status of ticked members.

• Enrol Member — choose a borrower who already exists, or register a new person (name, phone, email, ID number, date of birth, address and the date they joined) and enrol them in one step. A member number such as M000001 is given automatically; the prefix is in Settings.
• Import CSV — enrol many people at once from a file. The screen checks every row before anything is saved and lets you download the rows that failed.
• A member's page shows their details, Accounts, Membership fees and buttons to OPEN ACCOUNT and BUY SHARES. A borrower's own page also has a SACCO link to the member record.

A member's status is Active, Pending (waiting for approval — no account can be opened and nothing recorded until a branch manager or administrator makes them Active), Dormant (information only) or Exited (they have left; set it only once they hold nothing). A SACCO member's borrower record cannot be deleted, because their savings, shares and history are kept against it — set them to Exited instead.

By default nobody is enrolled automatically. In Settings you can tick Enrol new borrowers as members automatically if every new borrower should also become a member.

Branch managers, cashiers and loan officers see the members of their own branch; administrators see every branch.