Monday, November 6, 2017
I was talking with a customer in early November of 2017, and our conversation really illuminated
the difference between Moneylender 2 and Moneylender 3. They're using both versions side-by-side
until 2018 starts and they'll just work in Moneylender 3 after that.
Customer: "I have a borrower that was way behind. They just sold their business or something
and they paid the loan. How do I enter
that?"
Josh: "OK, did they pay it off completely?"
Customer: "No, they paid to bring it current. They haven't paid since May of 2016."
Josh: "OK, in Moneylender 2 we need to put in $0
payments for all the due dates that were skipped. We can use the Auto-Generate Payment History
tool to create them in one shot."
Customer: "OK, tell me what to do."
We attempt to use the auto-generate tool to add about
eighteen $0 payments to the loan to satisfy all the due dates up through
September of 2017.
Josh: "Oh, and we have to go into each of these
payments and move the Date Received past the grace period from the Date Applied
so you collect the late fees that are owed."
Customer: "It's showing that there's $900 due now… All these payments are for the regular
payment amount, not zero."
We discover that we missed a radio button option in the auto-generate
tool and have to delete the payment records we created to go back and set it up
with $0 for the amounts.
Customer: "OK, so how do I set it up in Moneylender
3?"
Josh: "Just enter the amount and date for the
payment."
Customer: "That's it?"
Josh: "Yep."
It was conversations like these in the mid 2000's when I first
saw the need for a reimagined loan calculation engine. As Moneylender's use grew, I eventually
stopped hearing about new loan types.
Confident that I understood the breadth of the task at hand, I designed
a loan calculation system that could handle all the situations that would be
thrown at it, while fully automating the determination of all the different
dates and amounts that might ever be needed.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Epic Thank You to CloudSmallBusinessService.com
Today I was checking the placement in Google for the Moneylender
website. I clicked on one of the suggested search terms "loan servicing
software for private lenders". The
ever-present Capterra was first, and CloudSmallBusinessService.com was
second. Moneylender was 5th. Since the second site was reviews of loan
software, and not a competitor, I clicked it to see their Top 10 Loan Servicing Software for Private Lenders list.
I was astonished to discover Moneylender Professional at the
top of the list. I do my best to provide
the easiest and most valuable loan servicing platform, scalable to any
lender. It is such an honor to be
recognized publicly as the top software solution for private lenders. Many thanks to Sam Smith for the vote of
confidence in our program.
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Moneylender 3 Beta Progress
It's been about two months so since Moneylender 3 was
released in Beta. There are a few people
that are actually using it to service their loans. In most cases, it's because the new
capabilities allow them to better tailor the program to their loan structure.
A lot of the program is functional. A new wizard that walks you through closing a
loan and zeroing out the balance is almost ready. In place of Moneylender 2's behind-the-scenes
and somewhat arbitrary loan-zeroing routines, in Moneylender 3, you'll have a
couple straightforward options to deal with surpluses and deficits at the end
of a loan. Another major result of the
new calculation engine's transparency and adaptability.
The next section of the application to get attention
will be the reporting system. Reports get
the testing and polishing needed to be ready to answer nearly every question a lender
might ask of their loans, and provide the ability to create and customize reports
to find answers to the most exotic analyses.
As reporting shapes up, the video and text documentation
will commence and we should be in the big push toward production release. There are a few capabilities available in
Moneylender 2 that are yet to be implemented in Moneylender 3. Most notably, Metro2 credit bureau reporting
and custom fields. These will all be
added into the software before Moneylender 3 is officially released.
It has been exciting to work with the many lenders who have
taken on the challenge of using the new program. It is becoming ever more stable, and hopefully more people will step into the platform to broaden the scope of the beta
testing period.
Labels: Moneylender 3
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Going to Court over a Loan
Whether you're the one filing the lawsuit or not, a lawsuit means
something is not going right on the loan. Make sure you find a qualified attorney to
represent you in court. There may be a
lot of fear and uncertainty if you are served a lawsuit, and you may feel
financially threatened. If you are
filing the suit, there may be a lot of resentment and frustration.
For a borrower that believes the lender has accounted incorrectly
on a loan, the suite is the final step in attempting to correct the
problem. For a lender being sued by a
borrower, the suite is a warning that the lender has not follower their
obligation to service or account for the loan properly. For a lender looking for a judgement against
a borrower, the suit is the means to secure repayment from a borrower that has
severely violated the normal repayment terms of the loan.
There are a few things that will definitely result in a loss
for the lender. If the loan contract conflicts
with local or federal laws, parts of the contract may be invalid. If the lender is not licensed by local
authorities as a lender or as a debt collector, there may be fines, delays, or
a judgement in favor of the borrower. If
the lender has done something illegal or the collateral was not legally
secured, the loan might be thrown out entirely.
Don't break the rules or you're likely to get in major trouble. Be sure you know the rules that apply to your
loans from the outset of lending.
Borrowers often bring suits against lenders when they
believe the lender has lost or misapplied their payments, or the charges are
excessive or not in compliance with the agreement. If you're about to sue a lender, do the
paperwork in advance. Find out exactly
how much the discrepancy is between your calculations and the lender's. If you have to go back 25 years through bank
statements and loan histories, do it first.
You may discover that the accounting is accurate, or that the
discrepancy is really only a small percentage of the loan. It may not be worth the legal expenses to win
a judgement. Interest on $3000 that was not
credited twenty years ago may only add up to a $500 difference in loan balance. If the payment was applied three months late,
the difference in balance may only be a few dollars, even after twenty years. Do the math before filing to suit to know
exactly what you stand to gain. Software
like Moneylender will help you get an accurate balance on the loan.
I've talked with a handful of lawyers regarding their
lawsuits from both sides of the loan.
What a judge really wants to see is an accurate accounting of the funds
of the loan in a way that matches the wording of the loan contract. If you can furnish the contract, as well as
the ledgers that follow the terms of the contract, the judge is very likely to
dismiss the lawsuit or rule in your favor.
Judges have requested that the accounting be produced by loan accounting
software like Moneylender, and may not be willing to accept an Excel
spreadsheet as the ledger.
Avoid the headache entirely with continuous, professional
servicing. Using Moneylender to service loans,
sending monthly statements consistently and complying with tax reporting
requirements not only ensures the borrower pays to the very best of their ability, but avoids a discrepancy between what you think they owe and what they
think they owe. Avoid the disagreement,
avoid the lawsuit.
Labels: judgement, lawsuit, lending, loan servicing software
Monday, June 26, 2017
Manual vs. Automatic Loan Calculations and Management
There's a huge commitment of authority whenever you automate
something. A simple example would be the
transmission in a car. With a manual
transmission you can personally optimize the torque and fuel efficiency of your
drive at the expense of doing extra work to choose throughout the drive which
gear best suits the current situation.
With an automatic transmission, the decision about how much torque the
engine needs to produce is handed over to the routines created by the engineers
that made the car. More thoughtful,
tested, adaptive routines can make the car more efficient or give better
performance or both. If the automatic
transmission is rough or inefficient or unaware of the kinds of roads you usually
drive or your driving style, the experience can be unpleasant. When you choose an automatic transmission,
you're putting your faith in the car maker to build a system that can shift the
gears at least as well as you would have.
Loan servicing software is like that, too. It's no small commitment to choose a loan
servicing program to manage your loans.
If the engine can't do the math the way it need to, you will see limited
benefit from the system. If only some of
the calculations can be automated you may find yourself having to maintain data
separately from the rest of the records.
If you want to do something with the data that isn't built in, it may not
be possible to extract the data in the format you need. It's no small step to put your loans in one
servicing platform, to the exclusion of all others, and also to the exclusion
of doing things manually.
I take this responsibility very seriously. Building a platform that can host your loan
data and fully automate as much as possible is my goal with the Moneylender
system. I want the solution to be turn-key
for every lender. From creating and
on-boarding loans to payoffs and taxes, the platform needs to know what's
happening and accommodate it all seamlessly.
Just like the transmission in my wife's car will shift up when going
down a steep hill to keep from gaining too much speed automatically, my
software needs to recognize what's happening on the loan before the user does,
and provide the right responses for the user to interact with.
Taking the plunge to a loan servicing platform is a commitment. We promise to back up our side of that commitment. To automate properly and efficiently, to be
responsive to your needs, and to provide ongoing enhancements. Our software is designed around the feedback
we get from our users. Be a part of the
conversation. Call or email us with
comments and questions. We're listening.
Labels: lending, loan servicing software, loan tracking
Friday, June 16, 2017
Getting Started with Your First Loans
So you find yourself with a loan or many loans. Maybe you sold a house, maybe you inherited a portfolio. Your hope is that borrowers will pay the loans promptly and consistently. You know there are a lot of laws that govern loans and collecting debts, but you're not fully acquainted with the details. You know you'll have to report your income, and that sometimes the loan will affect the borrower's taxes, too.
Don't worry. We're here to help.
Moneylender Professional includes free phone and email support. We get lots of questions about what a lender is supposed to do. We're happy to share what we've learned talking with hundreds of lenders since 2004. We want you to be as successful as our other customers have been, and we want you to maximize the return, stability, and value of your loan portfolio.
The first thing to do is to get yourself set up with our Moneylender software. Loans require complex calculations, and if there's a mistake it can cause lots of paperwork through amended tax returns for borrower and lender. Our software will make sure your interest, fees, and escrow are tabulated properly.
In a perfect world, borrowers would sign a thirty year mortgage, and then make 360 perfectly timed, identical payments without even a hint of a reminder. In reality that's asking a lot from a human being. We are all more consistent when we have friendly reminders and can see the progress we're making towards our goals. Your borrowers will be far more likely to pay consistently when they receive routine account statements and can see the progress their making toward paying back their debts. Moneylender comes with a variety of professional, customizable statement and letter templates.
Unlike virtually every other company in the market, Moneylender Professional has no annual costs. Purchasing the license is a one-time fee and our pricing model works for all sizes of lenders so even individuals can handle the purchase of a copy of the program.
And remember, when you buy Moneylender, our staff is available to help you use the software successfully. Call or email with any questions.
Don't worry. We're here to help.
Moneylender Professional includes free phone and email support. We get lots of questions about what a lender is supposed to do. We're happy to share what we've learned talking with hundreds of lenders since 2004. We want you to be as successful as our other customers have been, and we want you to maximize the return, stability, and value of your loan portfolio.
The first thing to do is to get yourself set up with our Moneylender software. Loans require complex calculations, and if there's a mistake it can cause lots of paperwork through amended tax returns for borrower and lender. Our software will make sure your interest, fees, and escrow are tabulated properly.
In a perfect world, borrowers would sign a thirty year mortgage, and then make 360 perfectly timed, identical payments without even a hint of a reminder. In reality that's asking a lot from a human being. We are all more consistent when we have friendly reminders and can see the progress we're making towards our goals. Your borrowers will be far more likely to pay consistently when they receive routine account statements and can see the progress their making toward paying back their debts. Moneylender comes with a variety of professional, customizable statement and letter templates.
Unlike virtually every other company in the market, Moneylender Professional has no annual costs. Purchasing the license is a one-time fee and our pricing model works for all sizes of lenders so even individuals can handle the purchase of a copy of the program.
And remember, when you buy Moneylender, our staff is available to help you use the software successfully. Call or email with any questions.
Moneylender Professional