Money in that
has to go back
Plenty of farms run on SACCO, bank or family money. The loan arrives as cash that looks like income, the repayments look like spending, and the year's profit comes out wrong both ways. Only the interest is a cost. Famu keeps the loan apart so the books can tell the difference.
Borrowed for a new pig sty. Paid back over a year, so it is never profit and its repayments are never expenses.
2% a month at a flat rate. This is the part the loan costs the farm, and the only part Reports takes off profit.
From a project for drip lines. Nothing to pay back, and still not income. It is money to run on, not money the farm earned.
First question: does it go back?
A loan has terms. A grant has none, and Famu will not pretend it is a loan at 0%.
Every record starts with one choice, Loan or Grant, then who it came from: a SACCO, a bank, microfinance, family or a friend, a government programme, an NGO, or the input dealer or buyer who advanced it. That last list is only there so the record reads the way you talk about it.
Pick Loan and the interest terms appear. Pick Grant and they go, and anything you had typed in them is cleared on save. Switch the kind below to see it.
Same rate, different interest
"2% a month" means two different loans, depending on what the 2% is taken from.
A flat rate, the usual SACCO habit, works the interest out on the full amount borrowed, every period, however much you have already paid back. A reducing balance, the usual bank habit, charges interest only on what is still owed, so the instalment stays level while the interest inside it shrinks.
Famu asks which one, and shows the whole schedule before you save. Change the terms below. The figures come from the same formula the app uses, rounded to whole shillings, with the last instalment taking whatever the rounding left so the principal adds up to exactly what you borrowed.
| # | Principal | Interest | Pay |
|---|
A term that does not divide evenly rounds up: ten months paid every three months is four payments, the last one early, never three with a month left over.
Tick it off, don't book it as spending
A repayment is two amounts: money going back, and the price of having borrowed it.
When you pay, open the loan and tap the tick beside the instalment. It is marked paid today, and its two halves go where they belong: the principal into Paid back, the interest into Interest paid.
Paid a different amount? Record a repayment opens the next instalment for you to change. It settles that instalment rather than adding a new one beside it, which would count the same money twice. If the SACCO waived a month's interest or added a penalty, write exactly that. The pieces do not have to add up to the original terms.
Where the loan turns up next
Reports adds the interest you paid in the period to the farm's expenses, and says so under the figure: "incl. UGX 24,000 loan interest". Interest counts on the day you paid it. The principal never appears, and a grant is never revenue.
Money Owed lists the lender under You owe with what is still to pay, aged from the earliest instalment you have not paid. A loan with no schedule at all, the family loan "whenever you can", is owed from the day the money came.
And the farm is told. A repayment due within seven days shows as a warning on Home and in the alerts, and one past its date shows as overdue. Seven days rather than three, because a repayment means finding the cash first.
The rules that keep it straight
The principal always adds up
Every instalment is rounded to whole shillings and the last one absorbs the difference, so the principal column totals exactly what you borrowed.
A recalculation never rewrites money that moved
Change a loan's terms and Famu offers to rebuild its schedule only while nothing has been paid. After the first payment, you edit the instalments themselves.
Who can do what
By default an admin can do everything. A manager can record a loan and its schedule but cannot mark money as paid or rewrite the terms. Workers do not see loans at all.
Interest only reaches people allowed to see loans
Reports adds loan interest only for someone whose role can read loans. Nobody learns what the farm owes from a profit figure.
Your farm's records only
Loans and their repayments are kept per farm and checked by the database, like every other money record.
It keeps your record, not the lender's
What it does not do yet
Famu does not add late-payment penalties or extra interest by itself. If the SACCO charges one, add it to the instalment. Your lender's statement is the authority; Famu is your own copy of it.
The accounting export does not carry loans or their interest yet. When you hand your books to an accountant, give them the loan page as well.
Earns its keep for
- SACCO and bank loans with a monthly or quarterly schedule
- Comparing two loan offers quoted at the same rate
- Family money with no fixed plan, recorded as you repay it
- Project grants that would otherwise inflate a year's profit
Does little for
- Goods bought on credit from a supplier: that is an expense paid in instalments
- The owner's own money put into the farm