Language

In Mifos, settings for country and language work together to create a locale-specific user interface. Choose the language you want first, then use the CountryCode value that must be paired with that language.

Use the following table to determine which LanguageCodes and CountryCodes must be paired with one another:

Example: Setting Localization.LanguageCode to FR and Localization.CountryCode to FR cause Mifos to display a French user interface.

Country

In Mifos, settings for country and language work together to create a locale-specific user interface. To get the language you want, it's possible that you will have to use a country code that doesn't reflect where Mifos will be installed.

Use the following table to determine which LanguageCodes and CountryCodes must be paired with one another:

Example: Setting Localization.LanguageCode to FR and Localization.CountryCode to FR cause Mifos to display a French user interface.

Currency

The currency that Mifos uses.

This setting causes Mifos to use currency set internally, in its calculations and database. Externally, you will see no effect. The user interface does not display currency symbols ($, £, etc.). This is a known issue.  This sets the default currency in Mifos.  All accounting rules without a currency code on the property applies to the default currency.

Example: AccountingRules.CurrencyCode=INR causes Mifos to use the Indian rupee as the currency.

Number of interest-bearing days

The number of days per year that should be used by Mifos in its interest calculations.

This setting does not apply to meeting scheduling. The meeting calendar always has 365 days. This setting also doesn't apply to fees and penalties calculation and repayment schedule generation. Because of its dependencies, once you configure this setting, you should not change it. For example, in the case of a moratorium, the loan schedule is recalculated, and changing the number of interest-bearing days in a year could change the calculation results.

Example: AccountingRules.NumberOfInterestDays=365 causes Mifos to use 365 days in its interest calculations.

Number of digits after decimal

The number of digits after the decimal that Mifos will carry for the currency.

This setting interacts with the rounding mode settings: Rounding mode for currency, Rounding mode for repayments, and Rounding mode for final payment.

While most MFIs use a value that represents the currency's finest level of precision, some do not. For example, the Tunisian dinar's smallest denomination is the milem, which is 1/1000 of a dinar. Instead of setting AccountingRules.DigitsAfterDecimal to 3, which would represent the dinar's finest level of precision, a Tunisian MFI might set AccountingRules.DigitsAfterDecimal to 2 (1/100 of a dinar).

Example: If AccountingRules.CurrencyCode=USD and AccountingRules.DigitsAfterDecimal=2, the number of digits Mifos will carry represents the currency's finest level of precision (1/100 of a dollar, or a penny).

Number of digits after decimal for interest

The number of digits after the decimal that Mifos will carry for interest.

Maximum interest rate

The maximum allowable interest rate.

Unless you're advised otherwise by a Mifos specialist, use the default value for this setting (999).

Example: AccountingRules.MaxInterest=999 means that the interest rate Mifos uses for its calculations can be as high as 999%.

Minimum interest rate

The minimum allowable interest rate.

Unless you're advised otherwise by a Mifos specialist, use the default value for this setting (0).

Example: AccountingRules.MinInterest=0 means that the interest rate Mifos uses for its calculations can be as low as 0%.

Minimum Cash Flow Threshold

The minimum allowable cash flow threshold

Example: AccountingRules.MinCashFlowThreshold=0 means that the minimum allowed cash flow threshold for a loan product is 0.

Minimum Cash Flow Threshold

The maximum allowable cash flow threshold

Example: AccountingRules.MaxCashFlowThreshold=99 means that the maximum allowed cash flow threshold for a loan product is 99.

Batch Jobs

Use the Batch Jobs section in applicationConfiguration.custom.properties to customize the batch job settings in Mifos.

Batch Size for Batch Jobs

You can set Hibernate cache size for batch jobs. 

Mifos version 1.2.x and older

You can customize various aspects of your database connection, such as which host to connect to, the database name, your user name and password, as well as the connection pool settings, by placing a file called deploymifosDB.properties on the app server classpath while Mifos is not running. A sample of this file is in the Mifos install package, in the conf folder.

Note: The file deploymifosDB.properties is based on hibernate.properties. If the latter changes in a future release of Mifos, your copy of deploymifosDB.properties may also require changes.

Mifos versions greater than 1.2.x and upgrades

See MigratingToPostV12DatabaseConfiguration for modifying your database connection if you upgrade from version 1.2.x to 1.3.x (or later). See LocalPropertiesFile if you've started with Mifos version 1.3.x (or later, including trunk development builds).

Starting Mifos

To access the settings on the Admin tab, you need to start the Mifos application.

To start Mifos:

1. Execute the Tomcat script named startup.sh/.bat in CATALINA_HOME/bin (for example, C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\bin), or if Tomcat was installed as a service on Windows, navigate to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services to verify that the status of the Mifos service is Started.
2. Next, visit http:///localhost:8080//mifos in a web browser.
3. Enter mifos as your Username and testmifos as your Password.

Customizing the User Interface

The options in the Data Display and Rules group allow you to customize certain labels and list-box items, hide or require certain fields, and define new fields for additional information you want to collect.

Defining Office Hierarchy

Office hierarchy is Mifos' view of how your MFI is organized. Mifos uses the office hierarchy information you provide for a wide variety of essential actions, including creating users defining new clients and groups, managing transactions, and reporting. At minimum, Mifos requires two levels of hierarchy: a Head Office, provided by default (Mifos HO), and at least one Branch Office. At maximum, there can be five levels: Head Office, Regional Office, Sub-Regional Office, Area Office, and Branch Office.

Defining office hierarchy in Mifos involves first removing office types that aren't represented in your organization and then adding those offices that are.

To remove office types:

1. On the Admin tab in Mifos, click the View office hierarchy link under Offices.
2. Clear the check box(es) for office types that don't represent your MFI's organization. For example, if one or more Division offices aren't in your oganization's structure, clear the Division check box. You cannot remove Head Office and Branch Office as office types. They are required.
3. Click Preview > Submit.

To add offices:

1. On the Admin tab, click the Define a new office link under Offices.
2. Provide information for the new office. Any office types you removed in the above procedure are absent from the Office type list. You can only have one Head Office.
3. Click Preview > Submit.

Creating Roles

After you define your MFI's office hierarchy in Mifos, it's time to create roles, which are collections of actions that a user can perform in Mifos.

To create a role:

1. On the Admin tab, click Manage roles and permissions under System users.
2. Note that the Admin role is the only pre-defined role. Click the new Role link to create a new role.
3. Provide a Role Name and select actions or groups of actions that a person can perform in this role.
4. Click Preview > Submit.

Creating Users

Once you define roles in Mifos you can create the users who will be assigned those roles. There are two types of users in Mifos: Loan Officers or Non-Loan Officers. A Loan Officer can only belong to a Branch Office.

To create a user:

1. On the Admin tab, click Define new system user under System users.
2. Click the office to which the user will belong.
3. Provide information for the user, including their User Hierarchy (Non-Loan Officer or Loan Officer).
4. Add Role(s) that the user will perform.
5. Click Preview > Submit.

Configuring Payment Types

Mifos uses Cash as the default value for accepted payments.

To specify a different or additional payment type: On the Admin tab under Data Display and Rules, click Define Lookup options.  Payment Modes can be added or changed here.

To specify what payment types are accepted for each type of transaction: On the Admin tab under Organization Preferences, click Define accepted payment types.

Setting Lateness and Dormancy Definitions

Before loan and savings products can be defined, the default loan lateness and savings dormancy definitions should be reviewed and changed, if necessary. Both of these settings are configured on the Admin tab via the View lateness/dormancy definition link.

• The loan lateness definition is the number of days of non-payment that can pass before Mifos changes a loan account's status from Active in good standing to Active-Bad Standing. The default value is 10 days.
• The savings dormancy definition is the number of days of inactivity after which Mifos changes the status of a savings account from Active to On Hold. The default value is 30 days.

Defining Holidays

So that it can correctly calculate repayment schedules, Mifos needs to know what your MFI's holidays are and how you would like repayments handled if a repayment happens to fall on a holiday. Mifos can either schedule the repayment for the same day (regardless of it being a holiday), the next workday, or the next scheduled meeting or repayment. Note that in Mifos, holidays are different from non-workdays.

To define a holiday:

1. On the Admin tab, click Define new holidays under Organization Preferences.
2. Provide information about the holiday and select a Repayment Rule.
3. Click Preview > Submit.

Information on Reporting and PPI Surveys

As a system administrator you may also be reponsible for setting up reports for your users and adding a PPI survey to your deployment. Use the following links for more information:

• Reporting in Mifos: Describes how to use BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tools) to build and upload non-standard reports.
• PPI Survey Conventions: Adding a PPI survey must be done at the source code level and requires assistance from a Mifos specialist. Use this link to learn about some of the requirements.

Configuring Mifos to work with Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry is an open platform as a service, providing a choice of clouds, developer frameworks and application services. You can place there your application so others may see it in web. Thanks to Cloud Foundry you don't have to worry about infrastructure such as servers. If you want to provide data access to your database created in cloud, you need to  configure your system variables.

There is a JSON array under VCAP_SERVICES that has complete information for the bound services. System variable which contains JSON document looks like following:

export VCAP_SERVICES='{"mysql-5.1":[
    {
        "name":"mysql-4f700",
        "label":"mysql-5.1",
        "plan":"free",
        "tags":["mysql","mysql-5.1","relational"],
        "credentials":{
            "name":"mifos",
            "hostname":"localhost",
            "host":"localhost",
            "port":3306,
            "user":"mifos",
            "username":"mifos",
            "password":"mifos"
        }
    },
]}'