Developing the feature to manage Employee Loan
Have you ever taken any loan from any financial institution or your employer? If you have the experience, you know that getting a loan is no longer a big deal nowadays, if you meet the basic requirements. The actual problem starts arising when you actually start paying monthly repayment (EMI). As you are taking a loan, in most cases, you have already expensed out most of your savings for the loan purpose. And besides taking a loan from the financial institution, you might also borrow some amount of money from your relatives. So it is more likely, in the first one or two years, you will face some critical financial pressure. But after that initial period, it becomes normal and you generally returned back into your normal life.
But that is not the end of your headache, it’s just the beginning. In that time, you already learned that if can do a fair amount of repayment in the initial phase of your loan tenure, it will save a huge amount in terms of total interest. So, you will try to save some money every month for the repayment.
In reality, many people just can’t realize, how much amount they can save by doing some repayment in the initial phase. It is because the repayment amount and interest calculation are very difficult. One can’t simply calculate the benefits with a simple pen and paper. Either, you have to refer online tools (which is not easily available) or you have to contact the financial institution for Amortization Schedule.
Around 2 years ago, I took some amount of loan from a bank for purchasing a under-construction residential flat. In Mumbai, it is very difficult to afford a house for a salaried person. The real estate price is so high here, getting housing loan is the only way out to buy a flat. Anyway, I have already passed the most difficult financial phase of my life so far. In the last 2 years, apart from paying normal EMI (Equated Monthly Instalment), also paid back all the credits which I took from my relatives. In the last month, to pay the last installment to the builder took another round of loan from my employer. While discussing the loan requirements with the responsible person in our office, he asked me to build the “Employee Loan Management” feature in our ERP product (ERPNext).
For those, who does not know about ERPNext, it is an open source ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software with a beautiful user interface, having all the necessary functionalities. For more details, please check our website erpnext.com. I work with Frappe Technologies who have started the project and responsible for the major development.
Coming back to the point, it actually makes every sense to build the feature, as the feature is very generic and many organizations will be benefitted. As I have already an end-user and have some knowledge about the loan, nothing could be better if I involve building the feature. And in our company, we internally use ERPNext to manage all our activities. As I am taking the loan, to manage the employee loan, it is our need as well.
“Scratch your own itch”
You might have heard this phrase many times before, it is always better to design/develop something for your own. This way, you know your needs very well, which leads to better outcome. So, I have started to develop the feature last month with one of my colleagues. While developing the feature, my recent experience helped me a lot to address the pain point of the end-user. Actually, I was thinking from both end-user and loan manager perspective, which is the ideal way of developing anything. We have included the amortization schedule inside the Employee Loan form so that you don’t need to refer any online resource for the same. The feature is still under active development and will be released with erpnext version 8. Below is a little glimpse of the under-developed Employee Loan form.
