Glossary of Terms

Here is a non-exhaustive list of words/phrases/concepts (with descriptions) you might come across while using Mifos X. In case you come across more such words/phrases/concepts and feel that they may aid others in understanding Mifos X better, feel free to add them to this page.

Concept	Description
Bulk loan reassignment	Several loans can be reassigned to a different loan officer in one go.
Charges	Fees that a financial institution charges for the services it offers. Charges are flexible and can be changed by financial institutions to suit their requirements.
Declining balance	The interest for a particular repayment is calculated on the remaining principal to be paid and not on the initial principal amount.
Disbursement	The act of giving the loan money to the client.
Equal installments	An amortization method for a loan, which means the amount paid by the client stays constant during every repayment.
Equal principal payments	The principal amount is divided equally over the said repayment time period. Hence, the principal amount that is paid in each repayment is the same.
Flat interest method	A fixed interest is calculated based on the initial principal amount.
Fund	A source of money received to create loans or carry out other financial institution functions.
Loan Officer	A financial institution employee permitted to act on client loan accounts.
Loan Product	A loan template with a unique name, defined rules, attributes, and default values.
Loan state—Active	A loan application that has been approved and is waiting for disbursement or has been already disbursed. Indicates an “Active” Loan.
Loan state—Closed	A loan application that has been rejected, withdrawn or all repayments have been completed, and now the loan is “closed”.
Loan state—Pending	A loan application waiting for approval.
Individual loan	In an individual loan, the individual is totally responsible for repayment of the loan and for payment of any associated fees.
Group Loan	In a group loan, the group as a whole is responsible for repayment and fees, and each participant in the group has a designated responsibility to pay their part of the debt. In a group loan, the group has a single loan account and the group is the primary unit that the financial institution interacts with; a single repayment schedule is maintained for the group. The group provides credit worthiness to all its participants; if one participant in the group is delinquent, then all group participants are considered delinquent.
Loan Account	A loan account is a specific instance of a loan product, with a specified interest rate and an account number, and it is owned by a financial institution client.
GLIM (group loans individual monitoring)	Calculates performance history separately for each participant in a group loan.
GLIM loan	The group is the primary unit that participates in transactions, but the performance history of each participant is calculated in a slightly different way than a regular group loan.
Overdue Loans	Loans that remain unpaid past their due (or maturity) date. All financial arrangements become overdue one business day after their due date.
Repayment schedule	For a loan, the dates and amounts of money to be repaid.
Center	In a financial institution hierarchy, Center is a collection of multiple groups.
Role	A named set of permissions enabling users to perform a set of activities in the Mifos X application.
User	An authorized person to use Mifos X. Has an associated password and role.
Client	To create a client you need to choose to attach a client to a branch or group and enter the client details. Individual clients can have savings accounts and borrow money according to the rules of your financial institution.
Active Clients	The number of clients with loans outstanding on any given date. An institution's official statistics on active clients are usually recorded as the number of clients with loans outstanding on the date its financial statements are filed.
Staff	A group of assistants to a manager, executive, or any other person of authority.
Transaction	The delivery of a security by a seller and its acceptance by the buyer. Provides the links to applying a payment, an adjustment, or a charge to the loan account.
NGO	Non government organization. One form of financial institution. An organization registered as a non profit for tax purposes or some other legal charter. Its financial services are usually more restricted, usually not including deposit taking. These institutions are typically not regulated by a banking supervisory agency.
Journal Entry	A logging of transactions into accounting journal items. The journal entry can consist of several items, each of which is either a debit or a credit. The total of the debits must equal the total of the credits or the journal entry is said to be "unbalanced".
Loan Account Header	Loan account number, current status, disbursal date, and purpose of the loan.
Account Summary	Shows the loan amount, amount paid, and the loan balance broken down by the principal, interest, fees, and penalty. It includes a link to the repayment schedule.
Recent activity	A list of transactions that have taken place with regard to the loan.
Account details	Shows the loan account details, which include interest and repayment rules and collateral details. It includes a link to a section where you can create a receipt for payment.
Performance history	Show various loan account performance indicators.
Recent notes	Shows the three most recent notes appended to the loan account, with additional links to add a new note or view all the notes.
Installment No.	Sequence number of the installment.
Due Date	The first due date is the first repayment start date. If the loan is disbursed during a meeting, the repayment Start Date is the disbursal date + frequency of loan repayment + grace period duration (considering holidays and nonworking days). If the meeting day falls on a holiday, the new repayment date will be the next working day or the next repayment day, depending on how Mifos has been configured. No penalty is calculated for the period between the actual repayment date and the new repayment date. In case the loan duration extends beyond the current year, the system will create the repayment schedule for all years. However, the system assumes that the subsequent years have NO holidays. When the holidays next year are defined in the system, the repayment schedule for that year will be regenerated, taking into account the Holidays specified. If payment is not received, the penalty will be calculated from the new rescheduled date. Succeeding Installment Due Dates are calculated based on Previous Installment Due Date, holidays, and nonworking days as defined by the financial institution. In case of holidays, if the head office configures it to be Next Repayment Day, no penalty will be calculated for that period. Penalty calculation will start if the client does not pay on the next repayment day.
Date Paid	The date when payment for the installment was received.
Principal	Principal paid or due, in the next payment or in the future.
Interest	Interest paid or due, in the next payment or in the future.
Fees	Fees paid or due, in the next payment or in the future.
Total	Total of the Interest + Principal + Fees.
Credit	An accounting entry that either decreases assets or increases liabilities and equity on the company's balance sheet. On the company's income statement, a debit will reduce net income, while a credit will increase net income.
Debit	An accounting entry that results in either an increase in assets or a decrease in liabilities on a company's balance sheet or in your bank account. A debit on an accounting entry will have opposite effects on the balance depending on whether it is done to assets or liabilities, with a debit to assets indicating an increase and vice versa for liabilities.
Amount	The loan amount for the client, limited to the minimum and maximum amounts shown in brackets.
Interest Rate	Applicable interest rate, limited to the minimum and maximum values shown in brackets. If a default field was defined for the product, this field shows the default interest rate value.
No. of Installments	The number of installments in which the loan will be repaid, limited to the values shown in brackets.
Disbursement Date	The date when the loan is likely to be disbursed (paid out). If the client/group has a meeting date, the date must be one of the meeting dates.
Grace Period for Payments	Type how long to wait for late repayment: that is, how many installments.The grace period starts as of the day the loan is disbursed to the client.
Business work activities	The type of activity the client is engaged in.
Collateral type	The type of collateral the client has provided for the loan.
Collateral notes	Explanatory notes about the collateral type applicable to the loan.
External ID	ID number of this loan from some other system
Loan schedule independent of meeting (LSIM)	If your financial institution intends to collect loan payments on non meeting days, it can set up in this LSIM system to adjust the repayment schedule.
Holiday	Periods of time when no payment is due. Each holiday has an associated repayment rule, such as Next Working Day.
Fund	A source of money used to make loans or carry out other financial institution functions. Examples are donor funds and deposits. Mifos provides a set of fund codes that administrator can name as appropriate.
Fund Code	A predefined numeric code for identifying funds.
Fund Type	Name for group of sources of funds.
Administrator	A user role giving permission to view and modify the structure of the financial institution, product definitions, and other internal settings.
GL Code	General Ledger code.
Borrower cycle	The borrower cycle is a counter used for tracking how many times a client has taken a particular product. The counter is used to measure social indicators with each loan taken. Its primary purpose is for PPI related reporting.
PPI	Payment Protection Insurance
Allow transactions on holiday	Determine if transactions will be permitted on holidays.
Allow transactions on non-working day	Determine if transactions will be permitted on non-working days, such as weekends.
Amazon S3	Determines if file and image uploads will be handled by alternative Amazon S3 cloud storage.
Constraint approach for data tables	Determines whether the Code Value Name or the Code Value ID will be stored in the generated data table. If disabled, the Code Value Name will be stored in the generated data table. If enabled, the Code Value ID will be stored in the generated data table.
Financial Year Beginning Month	This should be set at the database level before any savings interest is posted. Allowed values 1 - 12 (January - December). Interest posting periods are evaluated based on this configuration.
Force password reset days	Determine if passwords expire and whether or not users will be required to reset their passwords after a certain number of days. Allowed values are 0 - 30. Values of 0 means this isn't enabled and passwords will not expire.
Grace on penalty posting	Determines whether Moratorium functionality is permitted. If enabled, Moratorium functionality is allowed; if disabled, Moratorium functionality is not allow.
Is cache enabled	Determines if caching is enabled on the platform to improve performance.
Maker-checker	Determine if the maker-checker system will be used.
Penalty wait period	Defined in terms of days. Defines how many days overdue before an overdue penalty will be charged.
Reschedule future repayments	If enabled, reschedules repayments which fall on a non-working day to configured repayment rescheduling rule.
Reschedule repayments on holidays	Determine if repayments that occur on holidays will be rescheduled.
Savings Interest Posting Current Period End	Recommended to be changed only once during start of production. When set as false (default), interest will be posted on the first date of next period. If set as true, interest will be posted on last date of current period. There is no difference in the interest amount posted.
Saving reference	An Asset account (typically a Cash account), to which the amount is debited when a deposit is made by the account holder and is credited when the account holder makes a withdrawal.
Overdraft portfolio	An Asset account (typically a Cash account), that increases when a client makes an overdraft withdrawal.
Saving control	A Liability account which denotes the Savings deposit account portfolio and is credited when a deposit is made and debited when a withdrawal is done.
Savings transfers in suspense	An Asset account that is used as a suspense account for tracking Portfolio of Loans under transfer
Interest on savings	An Expense account, which is debited when interest is due to be paid to the customer
Write-off	An Expense account, which increases when a client does not repay overdraft balance.
Income from fees	An Income account which is credited when a fee is paid by an account holder on this account.
Income from penalties	An Income account that is credited when a penalty is paid by an account holder on this account.
Income from interest	An Income account, where income is generated when client pays interest on overdrafts.

You can also refer to the older Mifos X glossary for more information here: http://en.flossmanuals.net/mifos-user-manual/glossary/