LOANS
A loan in Rejesho is one record that moves through six stages. Each stage writes down what was agreed, who agreed it and when, and nothing further along the line can quietly restate it.
THE LOAN LIFECYCLE
The same six stages whether you lend to groups or to individuals. A loan officer sees the stage a file is in and the one action it is waiting for, which is the only question a branch asks of a loan.
Application
A loan officer opens a file against one member, picks one of your lending products, and types the principal, the rate and the number of installments. The total with interest and the installment amount are quoted before anything is filed, so the borrower hears the figure they will actually repay rather than a promise to work it out later.
Approval
An application waits in a queue for the role your thresholds name: a branch manager above one amount, a director above the next. Approval and rejection are both stored with the signer, the time and the reason, so the queue is a decision log rather than a status flag somebody can flip.
Disbursement
Disbursement records who handed the money over, when, whether it went as cash, mobile money or bank transfer, under which reference, and the amount that actually crossed the counter. The schedule starts from that date, and the repayment frequency is frozen there: changing it means closing the cycle and opening a new one.
Collection
One session is either one group at its meeting or one individual client. The collector enters the amount received; the engine splits principal and interest, posts the ledger entries, recomputes the balance and queues the Swahili SMS receipt once the repayment row is committed, so a receipt can never describe a payment that failed to save.
Recovery or restructure
A file that falls behind is on the arrears and recovery screen with the days it is behind and the money at risk. A late fee can only be charged where the signed agreement stipulated one, at that agreement's rate and ceiling, so no rate change can reach a contract backwards. Where repayment has to be rearranged, a signed cycle is never edited in place: a restructure closes it and opens a successor carrying the outstanding across, and a write-off is a proposal and a decision, each with a name and a date against it.
Closure
At closure the outstanding is met by the dhamana ya mkopo held against the loan and the cash collected on the day, and whatever is left of the deposit is refunded to the member. The closing figures are written down as they stood, so a later change to your settings cannot restate a loan that is already shut.
Every loan in Rejesho belongs to exactly one member, and that member is the borrower named on the contract. A group loan means the borrower repays on the kikundi's day, at the kikundi's meeting, in one session with the rest of the group. It does not mean the kikundi owes the balance.
So no member's balance is ever settled out of another member's payment, and leaving a group does not erase a loan already opened.
HOW THE FILE HOLDS
A register is only as good as what it refuses to let anybody change after the fact. These four are why a balance on a field officer's phone and a balance on the branch manager's screen cannot disagree.
A lending policy is named once and published as a version: the rate, the number of installments, the frequency, the fees and the late-payment terms. An application records the version it was written under, and servicing never reads that version again for money. Publishing new terms tomorrow cannot restate a loan signed today.
Individual lending puts the frequency and the collection day on the loan itself. Group lending takes both from the kikundi, so a group repays on one uniform schedule agreed with its leader. Either way the file, the balance and the contract belong to one person.
There is no editable balance anywhere in Rejesho. What a member owes is computed from their repayment entries against the total frozen at application, which is why nobody can nudge a figure and why the answer is the same on every screen that asks for it.
At the close of a day the cash a collector is expected to hold is set against what they declare and what reaches the bank, and the difference is recorded rather than argued about. Mobile money and bank repayments are listed with their references beside the cash rather than counted into it, so an honest day never reads short.
A demo is thirty minutes on your own figures, from application through to closure, and not a slide deck.