05.10.2012 User Meetup

Owned by Ed Cable
Last updated: May 22, 2012Version comment
5 min read

Agenda

Before each meeting we'll post a proposed agenda.  You can add any item you would like to cover to the agenda by emailing the user list or editing this wiki page. 

Session

Description

Presenter

Time

Introduction

We will also have an introduction of everyone on the call so the community can get more personally connected.

Ed Cable

10 min

Implementer Show & Tell

Thomas from Vastech Uganda will be presenting on his experiences implementing Mifos at several MFIs

Thomas

10 min

Demo/Tutorial

Each meeting, we'll do a demo of a feature or a tutorial of how to do a certain task within Mifos or how to use a tool or resource in the online community infrastructure. 

Demonstration of Mifos X Individual Lending by Keith Woodlock

 Keith W

30 min

Open Office Hours

This is the heart of the meeting - the time for users to ask any questions and connect with expert implementers and fellow users to discuss deploying Mifos, using Mifos, adopting technology, project management - any question you have.

Open

10 min

Product Feedback

Each meeting, we want users to voice their pains/challenges with Mifos and how we can make the product better. Any bugs you've found, feature requests you've had, ideas to make the product better should be shared at this time. 

This is the chance for our developers to directly hear from the mouth of the users how they use the product and what they need to use it more effectively.

Keith W

10 min

On the Call

  • Ed (USA, COSM)
  • Keith Woodlock (Ireland)
  • Thomas Ndugwa (Uganda, Vastech Uganda)
  • Lassaad (Tunisia, Enda)
  • Vishwas (India, Conflux)
  • Arun (India, GK)
  • Chetan B (India)
  • Patrick Maniraho (Rwanda)
  • Ashok (India, Conflux)
  • Shiva (India, Hugo Technologies)

 Notes

 From: http://sync.in/4JxGxadBHE

Presentation from Thomas from Vastech Uganda

CEDA Installation

  • Customer supporting does primarily individual loans for small farmers
  • Setting up Mifos
  • Over the Cloud - local hosting company in Uganda - had all the rights to make configurations and changes as needed to server
  • CEDA - Version 2.1.6 with Tomcat 6

Challenges

  • One challenge has been reporting:
  • Accounting is another challenge
  • Introducing idea of navigating to different page for reports is difficult - would like them directly in Mifos.
  • Don't want to have two applications to access (both in terms of cost of another system and ease of use)
  • Advising them to go to pastel and then doing accounts integration. 

Benefits

  • Ease of use and accessibility
  • Ease of generating individual loan schedules compared to past. 
  • Have helped MFI to scale up, productivity of writing loans to individual
  • Haven't incurred a lot of 

Other Installations

  • Friends Capital Finance
  • Staff Savings Scheme at another MFI

Mifos X Demonstration of Individual Lending from Keith Woodlock

  • Taking a platform approach to supplying and supporting microfinance services through the MIS
  • Client Information
    • Building in other approaches for capturing information needed in question groups but in an easier format. 
    • Quickly add in notes around clients. 
  • Loan Creation
    • Control over expected disbursement date, first repayment date, and date interest charged from. 
    • Schedule Tab with Summary and Detailed Breakdown
    • Payments can be added from past - expected amounts are populated. 
    • Supports adjusting transactions individually
  • Summary:
  • Screen-based Reporting
  • First stab is individual lending with work being done from Jan through Mar.
  • Basic IL functionality for a small MFI in Africa - improvements for IL and none of the limitations of group lending. 
  • Building in backwards compatiblity and better support for historical migrations based on lessons learned with past Mifos platform.  
  • Loan schedule gets dynamically adjusted as you change parameters when creating the account. 
  • More contro over amortization choosing between equal installments or equal principal installments
  • Easy to show cost of entire loan by swapping between interest rates. 
  • Other flexibility - better support for historical loans by setting the disbursement date and when the first repayment occured and when to start charging interest from. 
  • Approving Loan
  • Repaying Loan
  • Flexibility around auto-generatino of loan schedules - support for more frequencies, control over amortization, control over methodologies
  • Good support for historical loans
  • Pull quite quickly information from the screen that you want.

Technical:

  • All going through back-end API - others can quickly add on to the back-end platform once API is complete.
  • Client application developers can build out apps on platform as they need. 
  • UI is just a reference point right now - think of it as a themable skin.

Next Focus

  • Continue individual lending rounding it out according to needs of larger MFIs and IL needs
  • Bringing in support for fees, penalties, etc. 

Questions:

  • Will we keep core functionalities like variable installments and capturing cash flows or will we be starting from the beginning? 
  • Thomas: how will migration for existing users to Mifos X be?
    • API will be supported for bulk migration of data for full migration of data from whatever MIS it is. 
  • Will add these back in over time and will be rebuiding it in Mifos X but leveraging all the requirements we've gathered and knowledge built up in past. 
  • Mifos X will supply full functionality driven through APIs for migrating data in - won't have to go straight through database with scripts. 

See below for more on Mifos X.

Term Deposits Functional Spec By Chetan 

Supports:

  • Compounded interest for either quarterly or monthly
  • Set term at product level for month, week, or even a year or two
  • Setting of fixed interest for tenure of fixed deposit. if want to withdraw money before terms ended, overall interest would be reduced.

i.e. Term Deposit for 9% interest - withdrawing it 6 months early can specify a lower rate to be paid.

i.e. client does not withdraw at end of term - end of year will be paid default savings rate and not term deposit rate. i.e. if 3 months over - don't get term deposit at that rate but rather at the standard savings rate. 

- Demonstration of (Mifos X) Mifos - Individual Lending

   - see https://github.com/keithwoodlock/mifosx - scroll down to readme text

   - Purpose:

        -  platform approach - starting with individual lending methodology, other subsequent methodologys can be added and built on top of the chunk of work put into IL

        -  development/approach to be faster lighter cheaper (than current mifos), product approach to be more aligned with needs of MFIs

  - Demo

        - demonstration shows functionality suitable for small mfi we worked closely with

        - going forward, talking to ENDA, Al majmoua and hopefully GK around their IL process

        - This month, focusing on API and output will be a publically documented API for existing functionality in platform

        - Key functionality to show

             - Clients

                 - extra data

                 - historical input

             - Loans

                    - Loan schedule auto generation

                    - historical input

             - reporting

             - administration functionality

                 - offices, products, currencies configuration

                 - users, roles, permissions  (super1/demo, dataentry1/demo)

             - Office level scoping of data

             -  Client Application (UI)

                  - Globalisation

                  - Themeing