Following the Bank Rate change yesterday, we are hoping to adjust the interest rates and subsequently the payments due for each of our loans on the Margill Loan system.

/in , , /by

Q: Following the Bank of England Base Rate change yesterday, we are hoping to adjust the interest rates and subsequently the payments due for each of our loans on the LMS system.

All our loans are set at interest of a set margin + BoE Base rate, as BoE base rate changed from 4.5% to 4.25%, I need to change all loan interests -0.25% and then adjust the expected repayments to reflect the interest rate change

A: There are two ways to do this. The Old way and the New way as of version 5.6 (but do update to 5.7 at www.margill.com/get). We recommend the New way…

The Old way (Booo…) 

You can change the rates easily by selecting the loans you wish to change and the Ctrl Alt Shift i. This window will appear allowing you to reduce the rate of all the loans by .25. So you will enter -.25 and click on Add to actual rate (so you will add -.25%)

As for changing the payments to reflect this change, with the above method you would have to go in each loan and recompute the payments for Balance = x (right mouse click > Payments….).

The New way (Yeah…)

I’m not sure if you are on the latest version (5.7 when writing this) but new options are available for variables rates.

You can now link loans to Rate tables and when you change the Rate table, then all Payment schedules get updated to the new rate and you can tell Margill to recompute the Due payments to reach a final balance of 0, X or the existing balance, before the rate change. So very powerful options that you can add to existing loans. A bit of work once but then you are all set. Global changes allows you to mass change the Records to the new variable rate method (see lower down).

You might need to Activate the Advanced Variable Interest Rate module in Settings (your Settings will not look like this yet – Modules is not a separate tab in Margill 5.7 – I am on Beta 5.8).

This is where you create those new tables (under Tools):

In my email I sent you the rates so you need not type in all the rates (not explained here). You can import rates from a simple Excel sheet or a Margill TVL format (our older rate table types).

You should create the Rate table with all rates including yesterday’s rate.
Once the Rate table is create, go to your loan (try one first manually before using the Global changes) and see all the circled items. You can also add your spread.
When you click on Update Rates,

be careful to change the date manually to yesterday, not today. The system will be default, enter today’s date, not your rate date from yesterday.

You can also have the Due Pmts recalculated automatically to reach the existing balance or another balance of your choice although this option will do this automatically – best is try out a few loans manually to see the exact process…

So there you have it. You will be all set when rates change in the future. You will then simply add the rate change and all loans linked to this table will automatically be update: interest rate and all Due payments!

Global changes:
Global changes will allow you to update all loans of your chosing to the new Rate table and to enter the Spreads for each loan individually. In the Main window, choose the loans to update > right mouse click > Global changes

This is a two step process. First chose the table Abbreviation and Save.

Then enter your spread (Variable rate +or -). You will have to enter all your spreads one by one if they are different. If no Rate table is tied to the loan, then you will notbe able to enter the spread:

So with this, all loans will have the Rate tables and spreads but not the auto Due Pmt recalculation unfortunately. This option:

So, no way around this, hyou will have to check the box loan by loan in the Data tab.

This has not been added to the Global changes. I guess we’ll have to add this to our To do list in version 5.8. On it.

Hopefully this will help you out…

Webinar – What’s new in version 5.6

/in , /by

Released on February 27, 2024, the Margill Loan Manager’s version 5.6 has a lot of new and fun features for you to discover.  Check out our new webinar for the latest updates.

For more details on the new additions, you can also visit the Release Notes page.


Webinar – What’s new in version 5.5

/in /by

Find out about all of the new features in version 5.5 which was released on August 10, 2023.

For more details on the new additions, please visit the Release Notes page.


Margill Loan Manager – Explanatory document for Transition from “Perceptech” to “VoPay”

/in , /by

September 4, 2024

The transition from Perceptech to VoPay is done in a few minutes in Margill. Simply follow the instructions below and follow the short “Transition Wizard” in Margill.

1) Before the transition, it is important to know that the following fields are mandatory for the Borrower:

  • Name, First name (or Company), Address, City, Province, Country, Postal Code

The formats below are also mandatory, but some exceptions have been programmed in Margill, see paragraph ** below.

  • Province: Must be a valid two-letter provincial or territorial code (alpha code)
    • Provinces and territories : AB, BC, MB, NB, NL, NT, NS, NU, ON, PE, QC, SK, YT
  • Country: Must be a valid two-letter country code as defined by ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 – Canada = CA
  • City: These special characters are not allowed : Comma, underline and parentheses
  • Postal Code: Must be in standard A9A 9A9 or A9A9A9 format

** For Province and Country, MLM performs the necessary transformations before transmitting payments to VoPay when Provinces and Countries are entered in various ways. For example, if in the Borrower’s file it is written Ontario, Ont, Ont., etc., the Province will automatically be converted to ON in the VoPay file. Therefore, you would not have to modify your data in the database, however it is strongly recommended that you do.

To avoid last minute problems, it is STRONGLY suggested to check all this data relating to the Borrower BEFORE making the transition.  You should produce a report with these fields in all Records, check them and you then can re-import them with the corrections via an Excel sheet and Global Changes.  See our article to carry out this operation: https://www.margill.com/en/margill-loan-manager-update-of-borrowers-data-with-the-global-changes-and-an-excel-sheet/. Note that accents are allowed.

2) Download and install the latest version of Margill Loan Manager (version 5.6 from September 2024 – many minor but important corrections have been made in previous version 5.6) on  www.margill.com/get

  • If you use the SAAS version (cloud hosted), the update will be carried out for you starting in July. Please contact us ([email protected]) to advise us of your desired transition date to VoPay.

3) A Margill Admin must go to Tools > Settings > Modules > Electronic Funds Transfer.

The current provider is “Perceptech (Canada)”.

In the scroll menu, change the provider to “VoPay International Inc.”

You will get this message:

Follow the instructions. Enter the date of the last collection with Perceptech when prompted in Margill and send this date to Perceptech at [email protected]. The message is simply:

  • Our company XYZ will make its last debit with Perceptech on September XX, 2024.

If you deposit to many bank accounts, please advise them.

NOTE: VoPay also offers a service to actually credit your Borrower bank accounts. You can activate this service by checking the box:

3) You will then need, for each of the Creditors with EFT accounts, to update the data in the EFT tab. This data was provided to you by VoPay.

4) You can submit you EFTs exactly the same way you used to do with Perceptech.

Note that data pre-validation is carried out by VoPay allowing you to correct certain errors before the collection date. See the Margill Loan Manager User Manual on page 231 (https://www.margill.com/margill-loan-manager/user/MLM-User-Guide.pdf) and see page 254 for explanations of pre-validation.

Happy transition!

Margill Team

[email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Margill Loan Manager / ACCEO

/in /by

Explanatory document for Transition from “Perceptech” to “Transfere ACCEO”

September 4, 2024

The transition from Perceptech to Transfere is done in a few minutes in Margill. Simply follow the instructions below and follow the short “Transition Wizard” in Margill.

Note that ACCEO Transphere is the same company as Perceptech but on a technical level, Margill considers that ACCEO Transfere is a “new” EFT provider.

  • Download and install the latest version of Margill Loan Manager (version 5.6 from September 2024 – many minor but important corrections were made on previous versions of 5.6) here: margill.com/get
  • If you use Margill on the cloud (SAAS), the update will be done for you automatically as of July. Please contact us ([email protected]) to let us know the transition date to Transphere.
  • A Margill Admin must go to Tools > Settings > Modules > Electronic Funds Transfer.

The current provider is “Perceptech (Canada)”.

In the scroll menu, change the provider to “ACCEO Transphere”.

You will get this message:

Follow the instructions. Enter the date of the last collection with Perceptech when prompted in Margill and also send this date to Perceptech at [email protected]. The message is simple:

  • Our company XYZ will make its last debit with Perceptech on September XX, 2024.

If you deposit to many bank accounts, please advise them.

3) Perceptech usernames and passwords will automatically be transferred to the Transphere account so you will not have anything else to do.

4) You can submit you EFTs exactly the same way you used to do with Perceptech.

Happy transition!

Margill Team

Margill Loan Manager – How to create a report which identifies all of the unpaid payments

/in , , , /by

Q: How can we create a report which identifies all of the unpaid payments?

A: I would create and run a Transaction report.

1. Create a New report template. On the top right, pick up at least the Unpaid Pmt Line status (there could be other Unpaid Pmt Line statuses).

2. On the left from the “Transaction Data” theme, pick up at least Line Status, Pmt Date and Expected Pmt. I also included the Outstanding amount balance that will appear on each transaction.

3. Then add the loan identifiers such as loan ID, Borrower data, etc. (I moved them up for the report with the arrows on the right). You could also add an email, phone number, etc. so collectors can easily reach these clients. You could also email these clients directly in Margill (or automate the process, but I will not cover this here).

I called my report “Unpaid Pmts”. Run it for the desired loans and period. I ran mine for January 2024:

I have 4 unpaid payments. Notice the Outstanding amount on loans 10104 and 10392. This shows that these are bad payers since the Outstanding (balance) is higher than the current unpaid payment. You can show totals and export to Excel or other.

 

Margill Loan Manager – How to eliminate an Outstanding amount when the final loan balance is 0.00

/in , , /by

Question: I’m trying to apply a payment in order to elimintat the outstanding balance in a loan. Can you explain how to do it?

Answer: The outstanding amount is somewhat of a theoretical amount in more complex or irregular loans. The amount is based on what is actually paid (“Payment” column in the Payment schedule) versus what was to be paid (“Expected Pmt” column in the Payment schedule).

If the ending balance (at the end of the loan) in the Payment schedule is 0.00, then the outstanding amount is no longer really relevant. If you absolutely want to eliminate this amount, change, for one of more payments, the “Expected Pmt” amount to 0.00.

In the following example, a final payment of 18,450.37 was made. Depending on the order of operations to enter this amount, it is possible that the amount in the Expected Pmt column was modified to 18,450.37 when the expected payment was actually 8793.68.

So simply change the amount of the Expected Pmt to 8793.68 or to 0.00 and the outstanding amount will be eliminated:

The Expected Pmt amount may need to be modified for one or more previous lines if the outstanding amount is too high and the Expected Pmt amounts have been mismanaged in the past.

In order to change an Expected Pmt amount, you must have these rights:

Also note that in System settings > Line Payment Statuses, the Expected Pmt can be set to always be 0.00. This is the case for compensatory payments (which compensate for unpaid or partial payments) or for additional payments not included in the contract:

Margill Loan Manager – Update of Borrower’s data with Global Changes and an Excel sheet

/in /by

Margill Loan Manager – Update of Borrower’s data with Global Changes and an Excel sheet

Question: I must make sure that all my loans include a name, address, city, province (or state), postal code (or Zip) and country for the Borrowers in a specific format.  How can I do that in Margill?

Answer: This operation can be done quickly with Global Changes via an Excel sheet.

 Steps:

  • Create a personalized template in Reports > Record List with all the data that needs to be verified and updated, making sure to include the Unique ID for the Borrower in the first column:

2) Create the report for all Records (you can exclude the archived or closed loans – Use Advanced Queries to include the desired loans in order to reduce the size of the report if you have thousands of loans.). Produce the report.

Export data to Excel:

3) Clean up the Excel sheet.

  • Lines 5 and 6 do not have Borrowers. Either add a Borrower or eliminate the lines.
  • Duplicated lines (we can easily see them in column A) can all be eliminated – these people have many loans – we only want Borrowers, not loans.
  • Here is the result after the clean-up including the State and Country that now have 2 standard letters:

In my situation, I only need to update the State/Province, the Country and the Postal Code. I therefore eliminate everything that should not be updated in my Excel sheet while absolutely keeping the Borrower Unique Identifier which is the “key”, allowing me to link my Excel sheet to the correct Borrower.

You would have tens, hundreds or thousands of Borrowers for real:

4) Update the columns one by one via Global Changes for Borrowers:

In the Main Margill window, go to Borrower under File > right click on the mouse > Global Changes:

Click on the Excel icon. The ? gives you additional instructions about the simple Excel sheet required.

Column A is the Borrower Unique Identifier (not the loan) and Column B is the data to be imported or updated. In the first import, we want to change the State/Province and therefore in the right menu, choose “Borrower State, Province”. Then choose the Excel file by clicking on the orange file icon.

Note that for Borrower 10001, no update is required since the data is unchanged (the “Submit” column is therefore not checked).

Click on “Save” and the data will be updated.

Afterwards, we want to update the Country.  In Excel, copy the Country data into column B, save the sheet, then import (I simply deleted the State/Province column but it is wise not to destroy the columns or make a copy of the Excel sheet before deleting data). Do the same for the Postal Code/ZIP and other data as needed, one by one.

Note that the “Automated Imports” (API) would allow you to update all this data in one operation. There is also a Salesorce API available (not covered here):

Is it possible to issue a refund to a customer who overpaid, directly from Margill?

/in , , , /by

Q: Is it possible to issue a refund to a customer who overpaid, directly from Margill?

A: Do you mean issuing a credit to the customer directly in Margill like when you do a pre-authorized debit with Perceptech / Acceo / Transphere (in Canada)?

The answer is no with Perceptech / Transphere but with our other electronic payment partner, VoPay, yes it is possible by eTransfer (Interac credit). Credits to borrowers can be up to $25,000.

For the Payment schedule, if the borrower has overpaid, then you can create an Additional principal type Line status – which you would rename to Refund (will only refund principal, but you can also refund interest ) and the amount would be negative to increase the principal (and interest if needed) and the balance.

Don’t forget to add these to your reports and mathematical equations (for reporting) as needed as these become new transactions types.

New complete Margill Loan Manager User Guide available

/in /by

After many years of updates and new features, we are happy to release the new MLM User Guide for software versions. 5.5 / 5.6.  The PDF file, which contains a total of 1241 pages, is mostly a document you can consult for specific matters.  We do not expect you to read it entirely, unless you really need to fall asleep!

The Guide is the result of countless hours of labor by our Margill team in order to give you easy access to all the features offered in the software. It is complete with tons of images and examples to make things easier to understand.

You can consult or download the User Guide here.