Lending and school borrowing

What’s new — 12 October 2026

Finance → Lending now has School borrowing for authorised finance administrators and Parent fee financing for the existing parent workflow. A school can apply to its existing enrolled lenders for a bus, infrastructure or working capital loan. School authorisation, contract acceptance, bank credit confirmation and repayment reconciliation are separate actions. School proceeds are borrowing, not fee income.

Borrowing on behalf of your school

Open Finance → Lending → School borrowing. In the Finance menu, Lending is under Accounts & banking, after Expenses. The workspace has My loans, Loan offers and Loan & repayments. School borrowing requires a Finance administrator, Super Admin or All-access user. Assign named, authorised school users for the checks below. Ordinary Finance administrators need a different authorised person for the checks that require separation. A board resolution does not itself give its signatory permission to operate ShuleOne.

Choose the disbursement account

Select an existing school bank account under Disbursement account when applying. Manage its account number in Finance → Bank accounts. There is no separate borrowing account setup or ownership-verification step. The application captures the selected account; later account edits do not change an existing application’s destination.

Prepare an application and compare offers

Offers use four compact cards across wide Finance screens, two columns on tablets, and short rows on phones. Select Details & examples to expand a product’s full description before choosing it. Photos show the complete scene.

1. Open Loan offers or select View loan offers. Compare the lender, product, amount limits, flat interest period and repayment period before entering an application. Each published offer has a project photo and groups Loan amount, the Annual or Monthly flat interest and Maximum repayment period for comparison. Read its description for examples of projects the lender finances. Offers appear in purpose order: School bus, Infrastructure, Operating costs, then Other school projects. Select Choose offer to open the Before you apply popup, including required information, PDFs and the later approval/contract/funding steps. Select Start application, then choose School bus, Infrastructure, Operating costs or Others. Operating costs includes school salaries, utilities and supplies; it is borrowing by the school, separate from employees’ personal loans.
2. Complete Project: purpose, amount, repayment months and project description. Check the monthly estimate and total repayment, then select Continue.
3. Complete Finances & bank: monthly operating costs, existing monthly debt repayments and the school disbursement bank account. Costs and external debt are declarations the lender must verify.
4. In Documents, use Browse PDF to select the school registration, board borrowing resolution, project quotation/budget and school bank statement. Each PDF is at most 5 MB. Selected files show their filename, size and Ready to upload; use Replace PDF or Remove to change them.
5. In Review, check the terms, bank destination and document count. Accept school data-sharing consent and select Save for school authorisation. This creates the application and uploads the selected PDFs, with visible progress and saving status.

Back and Continue preserve the form and selected PDFs within the open page. They do not save an application to the server. Keep the page open until the final save and uploads finish. You can save a draft with missing PDFs, but all four documents must be present before school authorisation.

Use My loans to return to your school’s applications, and All my loans to leave an open loan’s details. While filling in the application, select Review requirements to reopen the checklist. Done, the close button or Escape returns to the same form with the entered values, consent and selected PDFs preserved. Change offer returns to the available product list.

Open an application and use Summary, Documents, Repayments and Activity to view each section without scrolling through the whole loan. Uploads show the file name and transfer progress in a centered overlay that stays visible when the page is scrolled, then a saving state until the document is recorded. Keep the page open until completion; failed uploads offer a next action.

If no offers are listed, the application form is not shown. This means no active school product is available from a lender linked to the school; it is not an eligibility decision.

If Save for school authorisation is unavailable, the message beside it explains the next required step. In-view popups explain failures and offer relevant actions, including Upload documents, Review details and Reload. A lost connection requires checking the latest application before repeating a financial action. If no school loan offers are available, your lender must publish a school product before you can apply.

Only lenders actively enrolled with the school and offering school products appear. Parent/employee products do not qualify automatically. School products support up to 60 months and KES 100,000,000, subject to the lender’s lower configured limits. This release supports flat interest with no additional fees or late-payment penalties. The monthly figure before funding is an estimate; the funded schedule shows the exact instalments, including any final rounding adjustment.

Assign approval access

An authorised user manager can assign Finance → School loan approver in the user’s access rights. This permits reading school loan applications and documents, and authorising or declining them, including the approver’s own applications. It does not grant general Finance administration, document uploads, contract acceptance, bank-credit posting or repayment processing. No user receives this role automatically. After rights are changed, sign out and sign in again to refresh the available workspace. Approval-only users open the school Lending workspace; other Finance pages remain restricted.

Authorise, accept the contract and confirm funding

An authorised school user reviews the documents and terms, enters an approval or decline reason, and selects Authorise & send to lender or Decline. All four required documents must be uploaded before authorisation. The creator may approve their own application when they have School loan approver, All or Super Admin access. Finance administrators without those permissions need a different authorised approver. Until authorisation, the application and documents remain hidden from the lender. Supporting evidence becomes locked after authorisation.

The lender reviews the recorded school collection summary, bank statement, declared costs, debt and project evidence. Recorded collections contain only valid school fee receipts from the previous 12 months; they are not a verified bank cash-flow statement and contain no individual parent or employee loan records. School applications require manual lender assessment rather than a parent or employee scorecard.

After lender approval, My loans shows Next: sign & accept the contract. Select Review & accept contract to open the Contract tab; an approved loan that has not accepted its contract opens on this tab automatically. The funding progress strip shows lender approval, school contract acceptance, lender transfer and school credit confirmation as separate steps.

Under 1. Download & sign, select Download contract for the lender-provided PDF. Check its security requirements, repayment account and first due date, and sign it. If the lender has not provided the PDF, the workspace shows Awaiting lender contract; ask the lender to issue it through Prepare agreement or upload an existing contract, then select Refresh contract. The lender must provide and confirm its actual conditions before a generated agreement is issued.

Under 2. Upload signed contract, choose the signed PDF and select Upload signed contract. Upload progress and saving status remain visible until completion. Under 3. Review & accept, an authorised user reviews the captured terms, checks the confirmation, enters an acceptance note and selects Accept contract. A creator with All or Super Admin full system access can accept their own school’s contract. Other Finance administrators require a different authorised user. School loan approver access alone does not permit contract uploads or acceptance. Acceptance stays disabled until the signed contract is uploaded. Once accepted, the workspace shows that it is waiting for the lender’s bank transfer.

The lender sends the full principal to the captured school bank account outside ShuleOne, then records its bank reference and actual transfer date. The application shows Confirm school bank credit. This status does not mean money has arrived.

An authorised school user checks the actual school bank credit, enters the exact lender reference, actual bank credit date and agreed first repayment date, confirms receipt of the full principal, and selects Confirm credit & activate loan. The first due date must be after the bank credit date and within three months. Accounting uses the actual bank credit date; the lender transfer date is retained separately. This creates the monthly schedule and posts debit Bank / credit School loans payable. Do not create a learner fee receipt or other-income receipt for these loan proceeds. A creator with All or Super Admin full system access can confirm their own application’s bank credit. Ordinary Finance administrators require a different authorised user; School loan approver alone does not grant bank-credit permissions.

Repay and reconcile

1. Open the active loan’s Loan & repayments screen. Review outstanding principal, remaining interest, due dates and payment history.
2. Pay the lender outside ShuleOne using the signed contract’s repayment instructions.
3. Under Record bank repayment, select the school’s Bank account used, enter the actual amount, unique bank reference and date, then select Record for reconciliation.
4. An authorised user checks the bank debit and lender payment evidence, enters a reconciliation note and selects Confirm paid. Use Reject with a reason if the transfer is not supported by evidence. All or Super Admin full-access users can reconcile a repayment they recorded. Ordinary Finance administrators require another authorised user; School loan approver alone does not grant repayment-processing permissions.

School-loan saves and decisions show a centred processing popup with the current action, such as Accepting school contract, Confirming bank credit or Recording bank repayment. The loan stays visible while its latest data refreshes. Uploads show actual transfer progress, then a saving state; other actions show that processing is underway. Wait for the result popup before repeating an action. Processing closes before the success or error message opens.

Pending and rejected repayments do not reduce balances or post journals. Confirmed repayments clear each oldest instalment’s interest first, then principal. Partial and early payments are supported; overpayments, including amounts already pending, are blocked. The last instalment preserves rounding cents. Once principal and contracted interest are fully settled, the loan shows Repaid.

A confirmed repayment posts debit School loans payable for principal, debit School loan interest expense for interest, and credit Bank for their total. Interest is recorded as expense when a repayment is confirmed. Closed financial years or protected carried balances block posting until the relevant years are reopened. The activity trail records documents, authorisations, contract acceptance, funding and repayment decisions.

School loan SMS updates

School borrowing uses school-scoped SMS updates for new workflow actions. The application creator and named school participants receive the relevant updates; recipients are deduplicated. School loan approvers also receive action-needed messages when a request is created or its required documents are ready for authorisation. Updates cover the request being saved, documents ready for authorisation, approval or decline decisions, the contract becoming available, its signed upload and acceptance, recorded bank transfer and confirmed school bank credit, and repayments being recorded, confirmed, rejected or fully repaid. These messages describe the recorded workflow; a recorded lender transfer still needs school bank-credit confirmation.

Messages are queued through the school’s existing SMS service and billed to the school. Delivery depends on valid contact numbers, SMS configuration, available credit and the gateway. A missing phone number is recorded as Missing phone for follow-up. Failed queued messages can retry without repeating a financial action. Use the workspace status and activity trail as the authoritative loan record; an SMS is an update, not proof of bank receipt or loan activation. Earlier historical events are not sent again when this update is installed.

Lender setup and servicing

In the independent lender portal, a seat with decision permission opens Loan settings and Publish a school borrowing product. Enter the product name, description/security requirements, amount limits, maximum months, flat rate and interest period. The product is offered only to actively mapped schools with lending enabled. Terms changed later do not rewrite existing applications.

In Applications, select Schools · borrowing. Open the application details and View shared data to inspect the financial summary, school authorisation, documents, contract status and repayments. Enter a school financial assessment note before approving. The lender can decline with a reason. The Loan progress panel separates Lender decision, School accepts contract, Bank disbursement and School confirms receipt. Record disbursement stays disabled until the school’s contract acceptance is recorded. Use Refresh contract status after the school accepts; the portal checks the latest contract and approval status again before opening disbursement.

After approval, choose how to provide the lender contract in the application’s workflow panel:

• Prepare agreement opens Details, Conditions and Preview. Confirm the lender’s legal name and address and the school’s legal name; registration is optional. Enter the lender’s actual insurance, security, early-settlement and repayment instructions, with any additional terms. Loan amounts, interest, repayment period, KES 0 fees and no late-payment penalty come from the captured application and cannot be changed in this editor.
• Select Preview draft PDF. Review the draft, then confirm the conditions match the captured loan terms with no extra financed fees or penalties. Select Issue agreement to school to store the actual lender contract. A draft preview alone is not available to the school and does not issue a contract.
• Alternatively, choose Lender contract PDF and Upload contract to provide the lender’s existing PDF of at most 5 MB. Upload progress and saving status remain visible. A contract already provided this way remains authoritative; the generator cannot overwrite it. Replace contract is available only before the school uploads its signed copy.

The school downloads the issued or uploaded agreement, signs it, uploads its signed copy and accepts the terms. The original cannot be replaced after a signed copy has been uploaded or accepted. Earlier applications with a signed contract can continue without uploading an original retrospectively. If issuance is not confirmed, use Review latest status before trying again; this refreshes status without automatically issuing another agreement.

After acceptance and the completed bank payment, select Record disbursement, choose Bank transfer, and enter the reference and date. System messages open in a focused popup with the next available action. A failed save is visible over the disbursement form; it is not hidden in the page behind it. School loans are recorded individually; parent/employee batch disbursement does not apply. School purpose uses the application’s selected project, such as School bus, rather than a parent fee-financing label.

The school must confirm bank credit before the application becomes active. There is no automatic bank transfer from ShuleOne. Lender reports include school applications; school repayment details are available in the shared-data view.

What’s new — 8 October 2026

The independent lender portal now shows each application as a short row. Select View details to see its full terms, assessment, shared data and available actions. The shared-data view is wider and has Print shared data. Detailed PDF opens in a new browser tab, where you can print or save it. Consent versions appear as readable labels in the view and report.

What’s new — 7 October 2026

Loan SMS now follows the request from submission through review, disbursement and repayment. Applicants receive status and payment updates in their app and by SMS; an authorised school HR administrator also receives employee checkoff action and disbursement notices. Loan SMS displays SHULEONE as the sender and is paid from the involved school’s communication wallet. Keep that wallet funded so messages can be delivered. Parents and employees use ShuleOne Support for loan help; the SMS does not direct them to the lender.

In ShuleOne Admin, HR & Payroll → Personal loans → Application history now separates the agreed repayment term from payments actually received. A funded loan shows its own confirmed amount and payment count in the history list. Open that loan’s details to see each confirmed M-Pesa repayment or payroll deduction, including the date and M-Pesa receipt when available. Cancelled requests have no payment history. After an M-Pesa payment is confirmed, refresh Borrow to see the updated balance and history. A pending or failed M-Pesa prompt is not shown as money received.

What’s new — 7 October 2026

For funded ShuleOne Credit employee loans, ShuleOne now calculates the agreed late penalty automatically after an instalment’s grace period. It charges each overdue instalment once: a fixed amount, or the agreed percentage of the part still unpaid at the grace-period cutoff. The charge appears separately in the employee’s lender balance. Direct M-Pesa repayments clear outstanding penalties first, then reduce the base loan. The school’s agreed payroll instalment is unchanged. Existing funded loans start accruing prospectively when the penalty migration is applied; earlier overdue instalments are not charged retroactively. Parent fee-financing repayments are managed by the lender and are outside this automatic employee-loan calculation.

What’s new — 7 October 2026

The lender can now record a batch of 2–100 approved applications from one school. For parent fee loans, one completed transfer to the school can cover all selected learners. For employee personal loans, a batch records a separate completed transfer and reference for each employee. ShuleOne saves the batch as one operation and sends each applicant their own disbursement SMS. The school Finance view provides the full parent batch allocation list for receipting.

What’s new — 7 October 2026

School Finance now labels lender-entered parent payouts Disbursement recorded and shows the receipt handoff on each application. Open the linked Fee Payments page after checking the school account and existing receipts. Only a fee receipt credits the learner’s account.

What’s new — 7 October 2026

In ShuleOne Admin, open HR & Payroll → Personal loans. A submitted request now has an Application details page showing the original amount, repayment period, annual flat rate, interest amount, total repayment, amount per payment, late-payment rule, payout destination and current status. Open it from the pending request, the loan balance or Recent requests.

While the request is Under review, the employee can select Cancel application and confirm. Cancellation removes the pending borrowing block and keeps the request in history as Cancelled. Once the lender has approved it or payout has started, cancellation is no longer available. A cancellation that races with a lender decision is rejected; refresh to see the current status. Cancelling an application does not reverse an already disbursed loan.

What’s new — 7 October 2026

Automatic lender payouts, including B2C, are suspended. After sending funds outside ShuleOne, an authorised lender user selects Record disbursement, enters the actual payment method, transaction reference and date, and confirms the payment. ShuleOne marks the loan as disbursed, sends the applicant a success SMS and activates approved employee payroll checkoff. If the SMS fails, the lender application shows Retry SMS; the payment remains recorded. Employee applications are shared with the lender only after HR approves payroll checkoff. Pending or declined HR requests remain with HR and the employee.

What’s new — 6 October 2026

Approved applications can now be paid from the ShuleOne M-Pesa business account in the independent lender portal. Parent fee financing goes through Daraja Business PayBill to the school’s configured bank route and account reference. An employee personal loan goes to the employee’s chosen M-Pesa number through B2C or chosen bank account through Business PayBill. Applications stay Disbursement pending until Daraja confirms the result; manual funding references no longer mark an application as paid.

The parent and employee borrowing pages now ask only for the essential request details. Applicants no longer choose or compare lenders: ShuleOne automatically selects the best compatible available offer. Terms, data use and consent are in one popup with the accept button at the bottom. Credit scores and score factors no longer crowd the application page; applicants can download the full credit-report PDF instead. Employee principal is also capped at 75% of verified average net salary on the server.

Parents with more than one eligible learner can submit one total split between those learners. ShuleOne rechecks every allocation and saves all of the child-specific applications in one transaction; if one allocation fails, none is submitted. Finance will see one application row for each learner allocation because each is underwritten, decided and funded against that learner’s own fee account.

At enabled schools, ShuleOne connects users to a financing partner through a ShuleOne borrowing experience. Parents apply from the parent web portal, ShuleOne Connect or WhatsApp. A parent loan is always tied to a named learner and can only be disbursed toward that learner’s fees.

Employee lending is a different product. Employees borrow for personal use from My personal loan in the web management system, HR & Payroll → Personal loans in ShuleOne Admin, or WhatsApp. The lender disburses an approved employee loan to the employee’s M-Pesa number or bank account. Employees who want salary paid toward fees use Salary → Fees instead.

The school does not provide the loan and cannot approve or decline credit. ShuleOne selects the best compatible offer automatically. The financing partner and final terms are confirmed in the agreement before disbursement.

Applicant consent

Before ShuleOne sends an application, the parent or employee opens Terms & privacy, reviews the full repayment and data-use notice, then selects Accept and continue at the bottom. ShuleOne records the consent version, time, channel, selected financing partner and purpose; parent consent also records the learner.

For parents, the lender receives the verified learner, current fee position and fee billing and payment records in its configured history window. For employees, the lender receives verified employment, approved or paid payroll history and the chosen M-Pesa or bank disbursement instruction. Employee applications do not share a learner or fee history. ShuleOne does not expose a general list of families or employees to lenders.

WhatsApp consent is explicit: the applicant adds agree to the command. A message without agree displays the disclosure and saves nothing.

Available limit and credit report

The applicant page shows the available limit, not the score or factor-by-factor calculation. Select View credit report to read the full assessment PDF in the app; select Save or share PDF in the viewer if you want a copy on your phone. ShuleOne recalculates the assessment on submission. The lender portal shows the score out of 100, risk band, eligibility, qualified amount, scorecard version and every KPI’s observed value, weight, factor score, weighted contribution and explanation. The portal also shows the consented fee-payment history and, for employees, payroll history.

Lenders configure separate parent and employee scorecards under Scorecards. They can set the minimum score, 3–36 month evidence window, capacity multiplier, employee maximum instalment ratio and active KPI weights. Active weights must total 100%. Protected demographic characteristics are not available as score inputs. New settings create a new version and apply to new or re-analysed applications; existing application evidence keeps the version used for its score. Parent scorecards use fee-payment evidence. Employee personal-loan scorecards use payroll stability, payroll affordability and employment tenure; fee KPIs do not apply.

Pending applications submitted before explainable underwriting was introduced are assessed automatically at the next backend start. ShuleOne refreshes only the fee, payment, employment and payroll evidence already covered by that application’s original consent, records why and when the evidence was refreshed, and leaves the original consent version and time unchanged. If live records cannot be refreshed, the lender sees a limited score from the original snapshot; missing payroll or payment history remains missing evidence and cannot be inferred from a salary or balance alone.

Parent capacity is supported by verified fee-payment patterns and capped by the learner’s outstanding fees and the selected offer maximum. Employee personal-loan principal is capped at 75% of verified average net salary and may be lower after affordability, scorecard and product checks. Missing evidence, a score below the configured minimum or an amount below the selected offer minimum makes the applicant ineligible. No outstanding fees applies only to a parent fee-financing request. The backend selects the best compatible offer and rejects ineligible or over-limit submissions even if a client is outdated.

Product term, interest and late-payment settings

Lender decision-makers configure commercial terms under Loan settings in the independent lender portal. Each parent and employee product has a minimum amount, maximum amount and a maximum repayment period from 1 to 12 months. ShuleOne compares the offers that support the requested amount and period, then selects the lowest-cost compatible offer. The applicant chooses only the repayment period; a one-month maximum exposes only the next-payment option.

The lender also sets annual flat interest and chooses one late-payment rule: no penalty, a fixed KES amount per overdue instalment, or a percentage of the overdue instalment. A configurable grace period determines when that rule begins. ShuleOne prorates annual flat interest over the selected months and shows the applicant the interest amount, total repayment and instalment before consent.

When an applicant submits, ShuleOne freezes the selected period, rate, calculated interest, total, instalment and late-payment rule on the application. Later edits under Loan settings apply only to new applications. Funded ShuleOne Credit employee loans calculate the frozen late-payment rule into the lender balance after the grace period; the school does not levy those penalties in fees or payroll.

Requesting a bank statement

While an application is pending, an authorised lender decision-maker can select Request statement and add a reason. This records the request but shares no bank data. The borrower must separately choose Review consent & upload in their parent or employee personal-loan view.

ShuleOne accepts an unprotected PDF, CSV or text statement up to 5 MB, analyses recognised credits, debits, statement period, monthly inflow/outflow, net cash flow and closing balance, then discards the raw file. It stores the analysis, confidence, warnings, file fingerprint and consent time. Low-confidence extraction is marked Needs review and does not add a bank cash-flow score. Even when the lender activates the optional bank cash-flow KPI, automated extraction must be checked and must not be the sole basis for a decision.

School finance view

Go to Finance → Lending → Parent fee financing to track parent applications, lender status, lender product and source channel. Finance never receives employee personal-loan rows. This view is read-only for credit decisions.

A fee receipt is not created when a person applies or when a lender approves. For a parent fee-financing application, the lender pays the school’s verified bank account outside ShuleOne and records the completed payment with its reference in the lender portal. Finance then records and reconciles the real payment through the normal receipting workflow.

For a parent batch, select View full batch and allocations on a funded application. Check the single school transfer reference and total against the bank statement and existing receipts. Then go to Finance → Fee Payments → Actions → New Payment → Split and allocate the listed amount to each learner. That creates one group receipt for the single transfer and credits every learner. Do not create a separate receipt with the same bank reference for each loan. If the transfer has not arrived, ask the lender to trace it before posting any receipt.

The Disbursement recorded label means the lender entered payment details; it does not confirm that the school bank account has been credited or that a student receipt exists. For each parent application, Finance should check the bank or M-Pesa statement and existing receipts against the lender reference and amount. Once the funds are confirmed, open Finance → Fee Payments → Actions → New Payment, select the learner, and enter the actual amount, method, reference and date paid. The new receipt credits the learner’s fee account. If a matching receipt already exists, do not post a second one. If the bank credit is absent, contact the lender with the recorded reference before receipting.

Disbursement settings and confirmation

In the independent lender portal, Disbursements still shows saved bank routes and school account details. Automatic transfers from ShuleOne are suspended, and changing these settings does not send money. Verify the destination independently and complete the payment through the lender’s manual process.

For a parent or employee approved application, select Record disbursement. Review the amount and masked destination, then enter the actual payment method, transaction or bank reference, date paid and an optional internal note. Confirm only after the funds have been sent. The application becomes Disbursed and the applicant receives a success SMS. If an older application still says Disbursement pending, reconcile its Daraja outcome before recording anything manually; the portal does not allow a second payment record there.

To record a batch, filter Applications by school and approval status, select 2–100 approved loans of the same type, then select Record batch. The review shows every loan and the total. For parents, enter the one school transfer’s method, reference and date; the amount must equal the sum of the selected loans. For employees, enter each employee’s own completed transfer method, unique reference and date. Only employees whose payroll checkoff HR approved are selectable. Confirm only after all relevant payments have actually been sent. If any loan is no longer eligible when you submit, the whole batch is rejected and no loan in it is marked funded. The resulting batch ID appears on each application.

Loan SMS notifications

ShuleOne queues an SMS when a request is received, a bank statement is requested, HR decides an employee checkoff, the lender approves or declines, or a loan is disbursed. It also sends a repayment reminder before an unpaid instalment, a notice after a missed due date, and an update when an M-Pesa repayment succeeds, fails, or finishes the loan. A cancelled request gets a cancellation message. Decline reasons and sensitive credit-assessment details stay in the app.

Parent messages identify the learner and school for a fee-loan payment. Employee disbursement messages identify the payout method and reference. Authorised HR administrators receive the checkoff action prompt and funded-loan checkoff notice; they should use HR Loans to review the record. Applicants should use ShuleOne Support in the app for questions.

All loan SMS uses the SHULEONE sender ID. The school attached to the individual application pays for each message from its own SMS gateway wallet, including a child’s loan within a multi-school family request. A school without an active gateway account or sufficient credit will have an unsent notification; ShuleOne does not charge another school’s or the platform’s wallet. A failed disbursement message can be retried from the lender application without recording a second payment. If a gateway connection stops during sending, ShuleOne checks its SMS history before retrying. An interrupted send with no local history may still have reached the provider, so an automatic retry can produce a duplicate SMS.

Employee payroll checkoff

An employee chooses one deduction or a monthly period up to the available maximum and chooses M-Pesa or bank disbursement. ShuleOne selects the best compatible offer and sends the application to HR with Waiting for HR checkoff status. Go to HR → Personal-loan checkoff to approve or decline checkoff; that action is not loan approval.

If the employee cancels while the request is still submitted, its status becomes Cancelled. The HR list keeps it for reference, but checkoff is Not required (cancelled) and there are no approval or decline actions. No loan or payroll deduction is created for that request.

The lender does not receive the employee application until HR approves checkoff. When the lender records the completed manual payout with its transaction reference, ShuleOne activates the matching external-lender checkoff schedule. A submission acknowledgement alone does not activate payroll deductions. The school payroll ledger describes the school as checkoff agent, not lender. The application does not appear in Finance. For a completed manual payout, the lender enters the actual transfer method, reference and date under Record disbursement. Saving it activates an HR loan for the employee with the application’s principal, annual flat interest rate and selected number of monthly deductions. Payroll calculates the monthly amount from the total repayment, caps the final deduction at the remaining balance, and adds a Loan deduction to the employee’s payslip when an eligible payroll run is calculated. Approval of that run records the repayment against the loan. A run calculated before the payout was recorded must be recalculated before approval to include the new deduction; an already approved run is not changed retroactively.

Set up school products in the lender portal

Open Loan products in the lender portal, or select Loan products from its dashboard or menu. This setup is separate from the school’s Finance workspace. A lender user with decision access can publish products; read-only lender users can view the terms.

Under New school loan product, select School bus, Infrastructure, Operating costs or Other school projects to fill in its name and description. The editable descriptions include practical examples:

• School bus: pupil transport and school trips.
• Infrastructure: classroom extensions, computer or science laboratories, and toilets.
• Operating costs: teacher and support-staff salaries, electricity, water and classroom supplies.
• Other school projects: library resources, security systems and learning equipment.

Review the description and add the lender’s actual security requirements before publishing. The Operating costs and Other school projects presets leave all financial terms blank; enter the lender’s minimum and maximum amount, maximum repayment period, flat interest rate and Interest period (Annual or Monthly), then select Publish school product. The presets start at KES 100,000, with a KES 9 million ceiling for school buses, a KES 20 million ceiling for infrastructure, and up to 60 months. Review these limits against the lender’s policy. The flat interest rate and period must be entered; presets do not set pricing. Publish each product separately. Choosing a preset does not publish it. Only active school products appear under Loan offers for schools linked to the lender; a category without a published product is not an available offer.

Current ShuleOne Credit school offers

Schools enrolled with ShuleOne Credit can compare these published offers under Loan offers. Availability is subject to the school’s lender enrolment and each application’s school authorisation and lender assessment.

Product	Loan amount (KES)	Maximum period	Flat interest
School bus loan	100,000–9,000,000	60 months	12% annually
School infrastructure loan	100,000–20,000,000	60 months	12% annually
School operating costs loan	100,000–1,000,000	12 months	12% annually
Other school projects loan	100,000–5,000,000	36 months	12% annually

Operating costs includes staff salaries, utilities and school supplies. Other school projects includes library resources, security systems and learning equipment. Choose an offer to review the preparation checklist before starting the application.

Annual and monthly school interest

For school products, choose Annual or Monthly beside the rate when publishing or editing terms. Monthly flat interest applies the monthly percentage to the original principal for every borrowing month. For example, KES 100,000 at 2% monthly flat for 12 months has KES 24,000 interest and KES 124,000 total repayment. Annual flat interest is prorated across the selected months. These are flat rates; monthly pricing does not compound interest or use a reducing balance.

Check the displayed period alongside the rate before applying or accepting a contract. The application captures its rate, period and repayment totals; later product edits do not change that loan. Existing products and loans remain Annual. Parent and employee product setup continues to use annual interest. School products accept at most 100% annual flat or 8.3333% monthly flat.

Lender reports

The independent lender portal has a Reports page. The portfolio PDF can be filtered by applicant type, status, date and applicant or learner. It includes application value, contracted repayment and interest, purpose, score, decision status and disbursement channel.

Use Detailed PDF on an application for the consent record, selected repayment period, annual interest, interest amount, total, instalment, late-payment rule, scorecard factors, disbursement instruction and decision/funding trail. A parent report contains verified fee evidence; an employee report contains verified employment and payroll evidence. Select View details on the application first, then Detailed PDF; the report opens in a new tab. Select View shared data for the consented evidence, then Print shared data to print that view. Use both views only for the assessment, disbursement, servicing and authorised oversight covered by the applicant’s consent.

For a school application, View shared data opens Shared application data with Loan, Finances, Bank and Documents tabs. Read the project and loan terms, collection summary and declarations, captured bank destination, and document list without scrolling through every section. Select Download beside a document, Print shared data for a printable copy, or Done to close. System-message popups offer Close and, when relevant, Review latest status or Review applications. These review actions refresh records; they do not repeat a payment or decision. A lost connection should be followed by a status check before retrying an action.

Schools have no automated credit score. Enter an Assessment note when approving; use New school loan product in Loan products to publish terms.

Rollout and configuration

The schooldetails.lending_enabled database flag controls school access. A disabled school does not see fee-financing navigation, cards or school finance links. WhatsApp still answers a direct loan command with a not-enrolled message, and no application is saved.

An enabled school also needs an active lender-school mapping and an active product. The independent lender is ShuleOne Credit. It receives only applications and financial data that the applicant explicitly agreed to share. Lender staff require an explicitly assigned ROLE_BANK account and partner seat.