Copying the developer list as well. Can we please review this specification
and see if this can be a part of release H. There is a lot to this requirement
( as suggested by Ryan) and it will require some efforts to get this done for
Release H.
Thanks
Chetan
From: Bekkinkeri, Chetan
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 1:20 PM
To: A good place to start for users or folks new to Mifos.
Subject: RE: [Mifos-users] Functional Requirements for Automated Penalties/Late
Fees
Hello all,
I have further updated the functional specification with a few more use cases
and also have taken care of the comments. Summary of changes below
1. Added use cases for
a. Removal of penalty from a loan product
b. Removal of penalty already applied to a loan account using the "remove"
function
c. Repay loan option to include the penalty calculated with option for
removal
2. Separated the savings use cases from the loan product. Savings penalty
will be handled in a different functional specification
3. Added details on the validations for the penalty creation - negative
numbers, mandatory values etc
4. Added the list of fields to be added to the penalty definition to a
new section 9 at the end of the document
5. To simplify the functionality, we will currently apply penalty only to
loans and savings account. In comparison, fees are applicable to loans, clients
, groups or centers.
6. From my understanding of the various requirements documented, I think
it is better to keep penalties completely different from Fees. This is because
the way the fees get applied to an account may be different from a penalty and
there is a need to differentiate that aspect. Also the repayment order will be
Penalty->Fees->Interest->Principal. (Does anyone in the community have a
different idea here ?)
I couple of open questions which may need to be answered are
1. What Mifos BI reports will the penalty functionality addition effect ?
2. What is effect of holidays on the penalty calculation ?
I still need to add some screen mockups to the specification but while I do
that, I thought the community review the specifications and give some feedback.
Link for the spec below.
http://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/display/MIFOS/Functional+Spec+Automatic+Application+of+Late+Payments+Penalties
Thanks
Chetan
From: Ryan Whitney [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2012 4:14 AM
To: A good place to start for users or folks new to Mifos.
Subject: Re: [Mifos-users] Functional Requirements for Automated Penalties/Late
Fees
Chetan,
Great start! I especially like all the examples you detailed on how the
penalty should be applied, super helpful. I've made some edits and added in
some inline comments/notes (Marked in red with a TODO) - I will also call some
out below and I'll also post these comments to the page as well. I've been
looking at it for over an hour, so going to take a break now, let you take a
look and make some edits, then let me know and I'll do another pass.
You can also view my edits by clicking here:
http://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/pages/diffpages.action?pageId=14909950&originalId=14910007
Although I'll warn you, its in wiki markup.
So, General Comments:
1. I see that you are doing this for loans and savings. It might make sense to
break the savings out as a separate Spec since it operates a bit differently
(maybe the Devs can comment). What do you think? Also, how many MFI's are
asking for this on savings? Might be easier to do loans first and then savings
later.
2. I see the requirements on how to create the penalties are in the Functional
Requirements section - I'm a little worried these are light - where are the
details on the limits for the fields? What errors need to be added? These
might warrant their own Use cases.
3. Some screen mockups would be helpful for this document I think
4. It's very important we stress the difference between fees and penalties in
this product as that affects the order on how payments are applied. Are we
sure this will be ONLY a penalty? (IE, paid before Fees) - You also talk
somewhere about changing the payment order? That's not clear what that entails.
5. I updated Use cases 4.1 and 4.2 - I've been looking at this for awhile, so
taking a break. Look at those and see what you think, I was trying to flesh
out a bit more. I also think you were a bit confused on what the validation
part is for. See if that makes sense and we can alter the rest and add more.
Some Open Questions (for you and the community)
1) Do we want to break out penalties from Fees in the UI? This would be in
the admin page, loan creation, savings creation, etc. For now, I've updated as
it saying Fees/Penalties in the document, but I see here that you list it as a
new section in the Admin page. If we decide to separate it, remove the (Late
Fees) section as Penalties could apply elsewhere and aren't just limited to
late payments. Personally, I'm inclined to keep them together, but that may
create more design/coding issues.
2) Is this for Individual only? Can you apply this to groups? Centers (for
savings accounts) - We may need a lot fleshed out here as well - should be
specific here.
In response to your Questions
1) This would mean re-opening a loan and applying a one time penalty? Or is
this to go back and change records entered in the past? I think the way to do
this would be to add an option on the closed loan page to "Add Penalty", and
after going through the workflow, the loan would be re-activated and the fee
applied. This might be a lot of work - could be some accounting considerations
to think of.
2) I'm not sure I'm clear on this question - but off the top of my head I see
there being two kind of late payment penalties. One is based on the number of
days you are late and the amount that is late, right? So every day I'm late,
it incrementally goes up. The second option I see is that a general penalty is
add whenever I'm late (Missed a payment, get knocked 5, miss another, get
knocked another 5). Does that sound about right?
3) I noted in the document that I don't think you need to get specific about
that - instead you need to detail how you expect this to work and the devs will
figure out if it needs to be a batch job or something else (I believe the
desire is to move away from batch jobs...)
4) Good question - I can see both being useful. Cumulative makes sense,
especially in regards to a maximum penalty. But the limit per penalty
application makes sense too as a lot of organizations have a fee that is stated
as the user either pays X or a percentage of the amount overdue, whichever is
higher. Do we have any feedback from users how they'd like this applied?
Last Comment - One thing to consider and maybe some of the devs can weigh in is
how can we simplify the feature? I only say this as there is a LOT to this,
I'm not sure this will be a simple job based on all the detail I see in the
spec and what more we need to add. May just be quicker to get something
simpler in first (that meets most needed requirements), start getting users to
use that and work on the next version that gets more into the weeds. Just a
thought.
Ryan
On Jan 6, 2012, at 1:08 AM,
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear all,
I have come up with a DRAFT version of the FS for this functionality and have
tried to cover as many scenarios as I can taking into consideration the inputs
from Mifos 3384 and other general Mifos requirements. Here is the wiki link to
the FS
http://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/display/MIFOS/Functional+Spec+Automatic+Application+of+Late+Payments+Penalties
I am sure this will undergo more changes based on feedback from the users. Can
you please go through the Wiki and let me know if there are changes required or
if some feature which you as an user wanted but has not been addressed ?
I do have a couple of open issues which I have marked red and also have listed
below the issues.
1) How can we adjust Penalties for loans which are closed? ( this
requirement is being requisitioned by multiple users) . Any pointers
/workarounds here will be useful.
2) Need to review the savings penalty calculations? If two consecutive
mandatory deposits are missed, do we apply one single penalty or multiple
penalties?. For loans, we have clear use cases which we can look up to from the
banking scenario but not sure for savings.
3) Batch job for penalty calculations : do we create a new batch job or
modify one of the existing batch jobs for this ?
4) How do we want to handle the minimum and maximum penalties ? Should we
have a cumulative limit on the penalties or a limit per penalty application ?
Right now I have added the cumulative case and made the use case examples for
it.
Kindly review the FS and let me your feedback so that we have comprehensive FS
for this functionality.
Thanks
Chetan
From: Ed Cable [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2011 11:53 PM
To: A good place to start for users or folks new to Mifos.
Subject: [Mifos-users] Functional Requirements for Automated Penalties/Late Fees
Mifos Users,
The community is coming together in strong force. One of the oft-requested
features they are currently tackling is the need for automated late
fees/penalties.
SolDevelo will be taking on development of this feature for the next major
release, Release H. Chetan from SunGard Technology Services in India (cc'd on
this email) is going to be consolidating requirements and drafting a clear
functional specification.
There are many variations in which the MFIs assess, accrue, and collect
fees/penalties for being late so we want to build the feature to be as
comprehensive as possible while minimizing complexity.
Currently inputs are being tracked through this issue -
http://mifosforge.jira.com/browse/MIFOS-3384. We'll also have a wiki page up
soon for the functional spec.
Any users who will be using this feature, please share your processes and
requirements for assessing late penalties by commenting on the issue,
responding to this thread, or attaching a requirements document to the issue.
Thanks,
Ed
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex
infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to
virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual
desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure
costs. Try it free!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox_______________________________________________
Mifos-users mailing list
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mifos-users
---------------------------------------
Ryan Whitney
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
US mobile: +1.206.734.5110
global: +1.206.235.4479
"The real malady is fear of life, not death" - Naguib Mahfouz
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow!
The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers
is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3,
Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d
_______________________________________________
Mifos-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mifos-users
