Loan statuses
Active, Paid, Archived, Uncollectible and renewed: what they mean, how they overlap and what you can do in each.
A loan's status is the colored badge you see in the portfolio and in the detail. It serves two purposes: knowing what you can do with that loan, and filtering your portfolio so you only work on what matters today.
The four statuses
Status | What it means |
|---|---|
Active | Alive and collectible. Not paid, not archived, not uncollectible |
Paid | Fully settled, or renewed (renewing settles the old loan) |
Archived | You moved it out of sight to stop it cluttering your list. No effect on money |
Uncollectible | You gave it up for lost and wrote off the outstanding principal |
A loan can carry several marks at once (paid and archived, for instance). The badge shown follows this order: Paid beats Uncollectible, and Uncollectible beats Archived. With no marks at all, it is Active.
"Overdue" is not a status
An overdue loan is still Active: overdue is not a label, it is a condition: the next payment date is in the past. That is why the portfolio's "Overdue only" filter is independent of the status filter: it shows unpaid, non-archived loans whose due date is behind them.
Archiving
Archiving is purely organizational: it does not move a single cent and does not change the debt. It is how you get a loan out of your daily view without deleting it.
You can unarchive at any time and the loan returns to its previous state. It requires the update loans permission.
Marking as uncollectible
This is the decision to give the money up for lost. It does not move the cash (that money left on disbursement day) but it does record the loss in your books, removing the outstanding principal from the portfolio.
You can flip it back to collectible (the loan counts as active again), but:
The write-off entry is not reversed when you unmark it. The flag changes; the loss already booked stays. Marking a loan uncollectible is an accounting decision, not a sticky note: use it when you truly give the credit up for lost.
The write-off is only booked the first time the loan crosses from collectible to uncollectible. And nothing is booked if the loan is already paid, renewed, archived, or if its outstanding principal is zero: there is nothing real to write off.
Deleting
Deleting is different from archiving: it returns the principal to the cash drawer and voids all of the loan's accounting entries.
It is only possible if:
- The loan has no payments recorded, and
- It is not settled or renewed, and
- You have the delete loans permission.
Try to delete one with payments and you get "Cannot delete a loan with payments recorded". The delete option does not even appear once the loan has collections.
Deleting cannot be undone. If all you want is to stop seeing it in the list, archive it instead of deleting.
Renewed
A renewed loan is additionally marked Paid and carries its own Renewed badge in the detail. It is a final state: it cannot be edited, deleted or renewed again. See Renewing a loan.
What enables each action
Action | When it is available |
|---|---|
Collect | Only if the loan is not paid, not renewed and not marked uncollectible |
Edit | Only while it has no payments recorded |
Renew | While it is not paid or renewed (an archived or uncollectible loan can still be renewed) |
Archive / Unarchive | Any loan that is not paid |
Mark / unmark uncollectible | Any loan that is not paid |
Update arrears | Always, even with payments recorded |
Delete | No payments recorded and not settled or renewed |
Arrears settings (daily rate and grace days) are the only thing you can adjust at any time, even when the loan already has payments: it changes how the late fee is computed from then on, not the arrears already accrued.
An archived loan is still collectible: archiving only takes it out of your list, it does not close it. A loan marked uncollectible, on the other hand, accepts no collections in the app: if the client shows up with money, unmark it as collectible first.
Who sees what
- The owner sees the whole portfolio and is the only one who can assign a collector to a loan.
- A collector only sees, and can only touch, the loans assigned to them. The rest do not exist for them, not even through search.
What each collector can do (create, edit, delete, update arrears) depends on the permissions you granted them.