Staff Loans

New → Staff Loans keeps a ledger of every loan a school gives its staff: who asked, who approved it, when the money was paid, the installment schedule, every recovery and the balance still owed — live, on one screen.

Staff Loans is not Advance Salary. An advance is a single amount taken back from the next salaries and stays on HRM → Advance Salary, exactly as before. Use Staff Loans for a loan repaid in several monthly installments.

1. Set up loan types (New → Staff Loans → Loan Settings)

Name and the campus it is offered at (or all campuses).
Limits: a maximum amount, and/or a maximum of so many times the employee's basic salary (read from the salary plan), and the most installments allowed.
Interest: none, or a flat percentage of the loan charged once (a 100,000 loan at 5% is repaid as 105,000).
Needs approval: on for most schools. When off, a loan is approved as soon as it is applied for.
Default recovery: from salary (payroll) or by hand (cash, bank or cheque).

A loan type is never deleted — switch it off instead. Changing a type never changes a loan already given.

2. Apply (New → Staff Loans → Apply for a loan)

Pick the employee and the loan type, enter the amount, the number of installments, the month of the first installment and the reason. A guarantor (another employee, or a name) is optional. Before you save, the pane shows the school's own limits, the interest, the total to be repaid and every installment. An employee can have only one open loan at a time.

3. Approve (New → Staff Loans → Loan Approvals)

The approver sees each application with the limits checked. Approve (optionally with a different amount, number of installments or first month) creates the installment schedule; Reject needs a reason. Approving and applying are separate privileges, so a school can give them to different people.

4. Disburse (New → Staff Loans)

When the money is actually paid, open the loan and choose Disburse: the date, how it was paid (cash, bank, cheque or other) and a reference. The loan becomes Active. If the first installment month has already passed, pick a new one here and the schedule moves with it.

5. Recover

From salary: when salaries are generated (HRM → Calculate/Generate Salary), the installment due that month appears as a Staff Loan deduction on the salary. The first time a school disburses a salary-recovered loan, a "Staff Loan" deduction head is added to its salary heads automatically (you can also add it ahead of time from Loan Settings). At most one installment is taken in a month; a month whose salary was not generated shows as overdue and is collected after the last scheduled month, or by hand. The balance changes when the salary is paid, not when it is only generated. If a salary is paid in parts, the loan installment is recovered with the final payment. Unpaying reverses that recovery.
By hand: Recover records a cash, bank or cheque payment against the loan.
Settle early: takes the whole remaining balance in one payment and closes the loan.

When the balance reaches zero the loan is closed (or, after salary recovery, click Close).

6. Balance, statement and mistakes

Every loan shows what was given, what was recovered from salary and by hand, what is outstanding and what is overdue. Print statement gives the employee a dated statement with a running balance. Nothing is ever deleted: a wrong recovery is reversed from Loan Approvals (with a reason), which re-opens a loan it had closed. A balance that will not be recovered can be written off there too, again with a reason. Every step is kept in the loan's history with who did it and when.

7. Reports (New → Staff Loans → Loan Reports)

Outstanding: active loans by campus and loan type.
Recoveries: everything recovered in a month, from salary and by hand.
Overdue: loans behind their schedule, largest first.

Things to watch

A generated salary shows the planned deduction. Only a paid salary reduces the loan balance. Unpaying restores the balance; then the salary can be corrected and paid again.
In Loan Settings, choose the school's ledger accounts before a loan is disbursed. If the salary has other deductions, also choose the Other Payroll Deductions liability account. The payroll expense and payment accounts selected on Pay Salaries must exist in the school's new ledger.
If an employee's salary plan already deducts "Staff Loan" by hand, salary recovery is refused for a new loan: clear the plan first, or recover that loan by hand.
Each screen is a separate privilege (Staff Loans, Staff Loan Approvals, Staff Loan Reports, Loan Settings) and follows the campuses the user is allowed.

The New menu is between General and Core. It appears only when at least one new module is enabled for your institute, and shows only enabled modules. Your user privileges still control which screens you can open. Ask EDUBase support about enabling a module.