Cooperative setup: account types and loan categories

Nothing about your cooperative's savings types is fixed. You create the types your members use ("Monthly savings", "Christmas savings", "Building fund") and the loan categories ("Normal loans", "Commodity loans", "Emergency loans"). Members then see a tile for each on their dashboard.

Before you startCopy Anchor Link

You need the cooperatives.manage_types permission (by default the Administrator and the Treasurer).

If your association made its own roles, those roles do not receive the cooperative permissions automatically. Add cooperatives.manage_types (and, for withdrawals, cooperatives.withdrawals.review or cooperatives.withdrawals.approve) to the role in Settings → Roles. The built-in Administrator, Treasurer, Financial Secretary and member roles already have what they need.

Savings account typesCopy Anchor Link

Each type picks one of three behaviours, which decides what it can do:

Fixed Deposit and Target Savings types carried over from the earlier version are set to not withdrawable, so locked money stays locked. Switch a type to withdrawable only if your cooperative really lets members take it out early.

Once members hold accounts of a type, what it behaves like can no longer change, so the rules never change under them. Create a new type instead. A type you no longer want can be set to Retired; members keep what they hold in it.

Loan categoriesCopy Anchor Link

A category groups loan products. Switch on A goods (commodity) loan for a category paid out as goods: members applying for those loans are asked to describe the item. Attach a category to a product in Loan products.

Withdrawal approvalCopy Anchor Link

Require two-stage approval for withdrawals is on by default: one officer reviews, a different officer approves. Switch it off only if your cooperative can't staff two stages. See Approving member withdrawals.