Chama Platform

Chama Platform

A full-featured digital workspace for Kenyan savings and investment groups (chamas). Built for both group administrators and regular members, it replaces spreadsheets and manual record-keeping with a transparent, organised, and fully auditable system. Every chama gets its own isolated environment with role-based access, custom rules, and a complete financial history.

The platform is built on a multi-tenant architecture where each chama operates independently, with its own members, accounts, contribution schedules, loan rules, and penalty policies.

✨ Key Features

Flexible Contribution Management Admins can create multiple contribution types with daily, weekly, monthly, one-time, or custom frequencies. Each member gets their own schedule automatically generated, and payments submitted by members go through an approval workflow before being recorded against their balance.

Loan Management Groups can define multiple loan products with their own interest rates, repayment periods, eligibility rules, and approval steps. Members can apply for loans directly, and admins can apply on a member's behalf. Each member's borrowing limit is calculated automatically based on their contribution history and a configurable credit factor.

Automatic Penalty Enforcement Penalty rules can be set to trigger automatically when a member misses a contribution or a meeting. Fixed and percentage-based penalty calculations are supported, and the system prevents duplicate penalties from being applied to the same event. Admins can also apply penalties manually or waive them with a recorded reason.

Multi-Account Financial Tracking Each chama can maintain multiple bank or mobile money accounts. Every approved payment, loan disbursement, repayment, penalty, and expense is recorded as a transaction against the correct account, giving the group a complete and accurate financial ledger at all times.

Role-Based Member Access Admins can create custom roles and assign specific permissions to each one, such as approving contributions, managing loans, or applying penalties. Members only see and interact with the features their role allows, keeping the experience clean and the data secure.

Subscription Plans The platform supports multiple subscription tiers that control which features a chama can access and how many members they can have. Platform administrators manage the available plans, and each chama's active subscription is tracked with full payment history.

Meeting Management Groups can schedule meetings with agenda items, track attendance, and record minutes. Members can see upcoming meetings and their own attendance history, and the system can automatically apply penalties to members who miss a meeting.

Member Dashboard Every member has a personal dashboard showing their outstanding contributions, active loans with repayment progress, any pending penalties, and their next scheduled meeting. The view adapts based on the member's role, showing group-wide statistics and management tools to those with admin permissions.

Approval Workflows Payments for contributions and penalties go through a pending-approval stage before being confirmed. Admins can review, approve, or reject submissions with notes, ensuring no transaction is recorded without verification.

Opening Balances and Account Migration When creating a new chama account, admins can set an opening balance to account for funds that existed before joining the platform. This is recorded as a proper transaction so the account history remains consistent from day one.