Loans

You’ll need: Loans, Liquidity pools, Contacts — if you cannot see these, the module may be switched off for your business or outside your permissions. An administrator can change either.

A loan lends from a shared fund to a member. It is the reason most savings groups exist.

What a loan records

The contact borrowing, the liquidity pool it comes from, the loan amount, the return amount, and a deadline.

Note the shape: loan amount and return amount are recorded separately rather than as a percentage.

Why an amount and not a rate

Because it is the number both parties actually agreed.

“Borrow 100,000, return 115,000 by the end of March” is a sentence a member understands completely and cannot misread. An interest rate invites arguments about compounding, day count and whether the fee was included — none of which a group of neighbours wants to have.

Recording the agreed amounts means the loan document says exactly what was promised, and the deadline says when.

The pool is the source

A loan comes out of a specific pool, which is what keeps the fund’s arithmetic whole: money lent has left the pot and is owed back to it.

This is why the pool and the loans belong to the same course. A shared fund with lending is a single system — contributions in, loans out, repayments back — and understanding one half without the other leaves the numbers looking arbitrary.

Deadlines in a group of people who know each other

The deadline is not a legal instrument. In most member organisations it is a social one: the date the committee will ask about it, in front of people whose opinion the borrower cares about.

That works, and it works better when the date is recorded rather than remembered. A deadline in the system is a fact; a deadline in someone’s memory is a disagreement waiting to happen between two people who will still see each other every week.

Lending is where trust is tested

Everything in the shared fund lesson applies more here. Approval by a second person, an audit trail, nothing deleted.

Add one practice the system cannot enforce: the terms should be visible to the members whose money it is. A fund where only the treasurer knows who has borrowed what is a fund heading for a difficult meeting, however honest the treasurer.

Try it

On staging.feeprime.com, lend from a pool to a member with a return amount and a deadline, then run the loans summary and see how the outstanding position presents.