Approving and rejecting applications

Every application passes through three reviews before the money can be paid out:

Submitted -> Collection Officer -> Area Manager -> Branch Manager -> ready to disburse

At any of the three reviews the application can be rejected instead. A rejected application is closed and cannot be reopened.

Who can approve at each stage

The screens use short names for the three reviews: CO (Collection Officer), ALM (Area Manager) and BM (Branch Manager).

Application status	Review waiting	Who can decide	Status after approval
Submitted	CO Review	Collection Officer	CO Approved
CO Approved	ALM Review	Area Manager	ALM Approved
ALM Approved	BM Review	Branch Manager	BM Approved (ready to disburse)

• Each role can only act at its own stage, and the stages must happen in order.
• Admins and the Proprietor (the organisation's owner) can approve or reject at any stage. Each approval moves the application on by one stage, so an Admin who wants to take an application all the way to BM Approved selects Approve three times.
• Other roles cannot approve or reject.

If you try to act out of turn, nothing changes and you see a message such as:

• "This application is 'CO Approved' and cannot be approved by a Collection Officer. It needs to be 'Submitted' first."
• "This application is 'BM Approved' and is not awaiting approval."
• "Your role (...) does not have permission to approve loan applications. Only Collection Officers, Area Managers, Branch Managers, and Admins can approve."

Approval can also be refused because the client owes fees, if your organisation blocks lending at the approval step: "This client owes ... in unpaid fees. Record the payment before continuing with the loan." Rejecting is never blocked by unpaid fees.

The Approval Queue

Small Loans > Approvals opens the Approval Queue, which lists every application waiting for a CO, ALM or BM review. Each card shows the client, the date, the stage (for example CO Review), the Amount, Term, Rate, the Group if there is one, and the start of the loan purpose.

• Use the Stage filter (All Stages, CO Review, ALM Review, BM Review) to show only the applications waiting for your review.
• Pending shows how many applications are in the current view.

To approve or reject one application from the queue

1. Find the application's card.
2. Select Approve to pass it to the next stage, or Reject to decline it.

caution

Reject on a queue card declines the application straight away, without asking for confirmation or a reason. To record a reason, open the application and reject it from there instead (see below).

To approve several applications at once

1. Tick the box beside each application you want to approve, or tick Select All.
2. Select Bulk Approve (n).
3. In Bulk Approval Confirmation, optionally type Notes (optional). The same notes are recorded on every approval.
4. Select Approve All (n).

Each application moves on by one stage. If some cannot be approved (for example, because they are not at your stage), the message lists their references and the rest are still approved.

Approving or rejecting from the application page

1. Go to Small Loans > Applications and open the application.
2. Check the Loan Details, Client Information and Approval History.
3. Select Approve, or select Reject.
4. If you chose Reject, type the Rejection Reason in the Reject Application window and select Reject. The button stays disabled until a reason is entered.

The Approval Progress steps (Submitted, CO Review, ALM Review, BM Review, Disbursed) show where the application is. Approval History lists each decision with the stage, who made it, the date and any comments. A rejected application shows Application Rejected, and the reason appears in the approval history.

Organisations that do not use approvals

The approval chain can be switched off for an organisation (the Require Loan Approvals setting, managed by your platform administrator). When it is off:

• a new application goes straight to BM Approved and can be disbursed at once;
• the Approval History shows the CO, ALM and BM steps recorded automatically with the comment "Auto-approved (approvals bypassed for this environment/tenant)";
• the money is still only paid out when someone selects Disburse Loan.

See Disbursing a loan.