Fees Definitions

Introduction

MFIs can charge fees for various services offered, such as membership fees, account charges, etc. Fees can be applied to loan accounts, and to client, group, and center accounts.  At this time, Mifos does not support savings account fees.

In addition to fees, penalties can be charged on loan accounts. While fees are charged for the various services offered by an MFI, penalties are charged to penalize the customers for deviating from the rules of repayment.

Specific types of fees, such as a monthly membership fee for client accounts, are referred to as fees.  For loan accounts, fees are included in the product definition. Mifos does not match the periodicity of a fee with a loan repayment schedule.

Fees are defined using the Define new fees link on the Admin tab.  In addition to naming the fee and identifying the type of account it applies to, a frequency is specified. For fees that are to be applied periodically, the schedule is defined. For fees to be applied on a one-time basis, the time is defined. The fee and amount and the accounting code to which it should be applied is also defined.

Fee Attributes

An MFI defines a fee according to the attributes provided in the following table. All attributes in the table are mandatory.

Edits. Users with appropriate permissions can make changes only to the state of the fee and to the fee rate. A fee can be changed from Active to Inactive or vice versa, although fees cannot be deleted from Mifos. For fees attached to loans, changes can be made to the flat rate or to the percentage and base used for calculating the fee. When a fee is changed, the change is automatically applied to new accounts and must be reapplied to existing accounts.

General process for applying fees

Once a fee is defined, it appears as an option whenever a user creates an account of the type for which the fee was defined. For example, for client accounts, only fees assigned to categories Clients and All Customers are visible. Users can attach any of the available fees to the account.  If the fee is a Loan fee and defined as a calculated value, then the amount is then calculated per the fee definition and added into the repayment installment schedule.

An LO can apply multiple fees to an account, and can waive the next installment only of a fee payment. An LO cannot waive an amount that has already been paid. An LO can also remove a fee from an account altogether. Interest is never charged on a fee amount.

Note the following:

• Overdue fees. A fee amount is considered overdue when the fee payment is not entered in Mifos on the expected payment date. For example, a periodic fee type with periodicity of one month is applied to a loan account, and the next payment date is October 15th; if the payment is not received on October 15th, the system considers this fee amount as overdue.
• One-time fees. A user can also charge a one-time miscellaneous feel to a loan account or a client account. This amount is added to the next payment amount.

For specific information about applying fees to different types of accounts, see Account Management

Out of Scope

• Amortization of fees over account term.
• Different grace period for fees vs. loan.
• Combination of periodic fee type and frequency equals to % of the amount.
• Group of fees like client creation fee bucket, training fee bucket, etc
• Fees waived for all clients/accounts for a limited period of time.
• New fee type to bulk accounts, after an account is instantiated