Marc Gelinas, CEO for Margill, is currently attending the 64th edition of the annual congress of the Association of Economic Development Professionnals of the province of Quebec. (Association des Professionnels en développement économique du Québec – APDEQ), which is being held in the city of Sherbrooke.
This year’s theme is the equation of economic prosperity, inpired by quantum. Several workshops and activities are presented around this theme.
September 10, 2024 – Margill CEO Marc Gelinas is currently attending the Canada Fintech Forum in Montreal.
The Canada Fintech Forum is a landmark international gathering that aims to showcase emerging global trends in Fintech, new technology solutions for the financial industry and emerging Fintech start-ups. The Fintech Forum also aims to facilitate networking and collaboration between financial institutions, technology providers, start-ups and other key players in the financial services sector, as well as contribute to the visibility of Canada’s Fintech talent.
Photo Marc Gélinas – Canada Fintech Forum, Montreal
September 4, 2024
The transition from Perceptech to VoPay is done in a few minutes in Margill. Simply follow the instructions below and follow the short “Transition Wizard” in Margill.
1) Before the transition, it is important to know that the following fields are mandatory for the Borrower:
The formats below are also mandatory, but some exceptions have been programmed in Margill, see paragraph ** below.
** For Province and Country, MLM performs the necessary transformations before transmitting payments to VoPay when Provinces and Countries are entered in various ways. For example, if in the Borrower’s file it is written Ontario, Ont, Ont., etc., the Province will automatically be converted to ON in the VoPay file. Therefore, you would not have to modify your data in the database, however it is strongly recommended that you do.
To avoid last minute problems, it is STRONGLY suggested to check all this data relating to the Borrower BEFORE making the transition. You should produce a report with these fields in all Records, check them and you then can re-import them with the corrections via an Excel sheet and Global Changes. See our article to carry out this operation: https://www.margill.com/en/margill-loan-manager-update-of-borrowers-data-with-the-global-changes-and-an-excel-sheet/. Note that accents are allowed.
2) Download and install the latest version of Margill Loan Manager (version 5.6 from September 2024 – many minor but important corrections have been made in previous version 5.6) on www.margill.com/get
3) A Margill Admin must go to Tools > Settings > Modules > Electronic Funds Transfer.
The current provider is “Perceptech (Canada)”.
In the scroll menu, change the provider to “VoPay International Inc.”
You will get this message:
Follow the instructions. Enter the date of the last collection with Perceptech when prompted in Margill and send this date to Perceptech at [email protected]. The message is simply:
If you deposit to many bank accounts, please advise them.
NOTE: VoPay also offers a service to actually credit your Borrower bank accounts. You can activate this service by checking the box:
3) You will then need, for each of the Creditors with EFT accounts, to update the data in the EFT tab. This data was provided to you by VoPay.
4) You can submit you EFTs exactly the same way you used to do with Perceptech.
Note that data pre-validation is carried out by VoPay allowing you to correct certain errors before the collection date. See the Margill Loan Manager User Manual on page 231 (https://www.margill.com/margill-loan-manager/user/MLM-User-Guide.pdf) and see page 254 for explanations of pre-validation.
Happy transition!
Margill Team
Explanatory document for Transition from “Perceptech” to “Transfere ACCEO”
September 4, 2024
The transition from Perceptech to Transfere is done in a few minutes in Margill. Simply follow the instructions below and follow the short “Transition Wizard” in Margill.
Note that ACCEO Transphere is the same company as Perceptech but on a technical level, Margill considers that ACCEO Transfere is a “new” EFT provider.
The current provider is “Perceptech (Canada)”.
In the scroll menu, change the provider to “ACCEO Transphere”.
You will get this message:
Follow the instructions. Enter the date of the last collection with Perceptech when prompted in Margill and also send this date to Perceptech at [email protected]. The message is simple:
If you deposit to many bank accounts, please advise them.
3) Perceptech usernames and passwords will automatically be transferred to the Transphere account so you will not have anything else to do.
4) You can submit you EFTs exactly the same way you used to do with Perceptech.
Happy transition!
Margill Team
Q: How can we create a report which identifies all of the unpaid payments?
A: I would create and run a Transaction report.
1. Create a New report template. On the top right, pick up at least the Unpaid Pmt Line status (there could be other Unpaid Pmt Line statuses).
2. On the left from the “Transaction Data” theme, pick up at least Line Status, Pmt Date and Expected Pmt. I also included the Outstanding amount balance that will appear on each transaction.
3. Then add the loan identifiers such as loan ID, Borrower data, etc. (I moved them up for the report with the arrows on the right). You could also add an email, phone number, etc. so collectors can easily reach these clients. You could also email these clients directly in Margill (or automate the process, but I will not cover this here).
I called my report “Unpaid Pmts”. Run it for the desired loans and period. I ran mine for January 2024:
I have 4 unpaid payments. Notice the Outstanding amount on loans 10104 and 10392. This shows that these are bad payers since the Outstanding (balance) is higher than the current unpaid payment. You can show totals and export to Excel or other.
Question: I’m trying to apply a payment in order to elimintat the outstanding balance in a loan. Can you explain how to do it?
Answer: The outstanding amount is somewhat of a theoretical amount in more complex or irregular loans. The amount is based on what is actually paid (“Payment” column in the Payment schedule) versus what was to be paid (“Expected Pmt” column in the Payment schedule).
If the ending balance (at the end of the loan) in the Payment schedule is 0.00, then the outstanding amount is no longer really relevant. If you absolutely want to eliminate this amount, change, for one of more payments, the “Expected Pmt” amount to 0.00.
In the following example, a final payment of 18,450.37 was made. Depending on the order of operations to enter this amount, it is possible that the amount in the Expected Pmt column was modified to 18,450.37 when the expected payment was actually 8793.68.
So simply change the amount of the Expected Pmt to 8793.68 or to 0.00 and the outstanding amount will be eliminated:
The Expected Pmt amount may need to be modified for one or more previous lines if the outstanding amount is too high and the Expected Pmt amounts have been mismanaged in the past.
In order to change an Expected Pmt amount, you must have these rights:
Also note that in System settings > Line Payment Statuses, the Expected Pmt can be set to always be 0.00. This is the case for compensatory payments (which compensate for unpaid or partial payments) or for additional payments not included in the contract:
Margill Loan Manager – Update of Borrower’s data with Global Changes and an Excel sheet
Question: I must make sure that all my loans include a name, address, city, province (or state), postal code (or Zip) and country for the Borrowers in a specific format. How can I do that in Margill?
Answer: This operation can be done quickly with Global Changes via an Excel sheet.
Steps:
2) Create the report for all Records (you can exclude the archived or closed loans – Use Advanced Queries to include the desired loans in order to reduce the size of the report if you have thousands of loans.). Produce the report.
Export data to Excel:
3) Clean up the Excel sheet.
In my situation, I only need to update the State/Province, the Country and the Postal Code. I therefore eliminate everything that should not be updated in my Excel sheet while absolutely keeping the Borrower Unique Identifier which is the “key”, allowing me to link my Excel sheet to the correct Borrower.
You would have tens, hundreds or thousands of Borrowers for real:
4) Update the columns one by one via Global Changes for Borrowers:
In the Main Margill window, go to Borrower under File > right click on the mouse > Global Changes:
Click on the Excel icon. The ? gives you additional instructions about the simple Excel sheet required.
Column A is the Borrower Unique Identifier (not the loan) and Column B is the data to be imported or updated. In the first import, we want to change the State/Province and therefore in the right menu, choose “Borrower State, Province”. Then choose the Excel file by clicking on the orange file icon
.
Note that for Borrower 10001, no update is required since the data is unchanged (the “Submit” column is therefore not checked).
Click on “Save” and the data will be updated.
Afterwards, we want to update the Country. In Excel, copy the Country data into column B, save the sheet, then import (I simply deleted the State/Province column but it is wise not to destroy the columns or make a copy of the Excel sheet before deleting data). Do the same for the Postal Code/ZIP and other data as needed, one by one.
Note that the “Automated Imports” (API) would allow you to update all this data in one operation. There is also a Salesorce API available (not covered here):
Q: Is it possible to issue a refund to a customer who overpaid, directly from Margill?
A: Do you mean issuing a credit to the customer directly in Margill like when you do a pre-authorized debit with Perceptech / Acceo / Transphere (in Canada)?
The answer is no with Perceptech / Transphere but with our other electronic payment partner, VoPay, yes it is possible by eTransfer (Interac credit). Credits to borrowers can be up to $25,000.
For the Payment schedule, if the borrower has overpaid, then you can create an Additional principal type Line status – which you would rename to Refund (will only refund principal, but you can also refund interest ) and the amount would be negative to increase the principal (and interest if needed) and the balance.
Don’t forget to add these to your reports and mathematical equations (for reporting) as needed as these become new transactions types.
In Budget 2024, the Government of Canada announced its plan for the implementation of consumer-driven banking.
Consumer-driven banking, also known as open banking or consumer-directed finance, refers to frameworks that allow consumers and small businesses to securely transfer their financial data through an application programming interface (API) to approved service providers of their choice. Consumer-driven banking enables consumers to securely use data-driven financial services that can help them better manage their finances and improve their financial outcomes.
Consumer-driven banking may offer many benefits, but it’s important that Canada introduces it in a way that protects consumers.
For more information about the subject, visit this page on the Government of Canada’s website.
Always borrow from pessimists, they won’t expect to get paid back…