{"id":12135,"date":"2020-03-19T02:25:43","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T02:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/margill.com\/?p=12135"},"modified":"2025-10-15T15:37:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T19:37:13","slug":"how-to-provide-your-borrowers-a-temporary-payment-and-interest-break-because-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-deferred-payments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/margill.com\/en\/how-to-provide-your-borrowers-a-temporary-payment-and-interest-break-because-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-deferred-payments\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Defer Payments and Interest to give your Borrowers some Breathing Room Because of the COVID 19 Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q: How can I provide my borrowers a temporary payment and interest break in Margill Loan Manager?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: With normal loans, those with regular payments, at regular intervals, and no regular fees or taxes (the case with leases), this can easily be done in Margill and in bulk. So you need not do this individually, loan by loan unless you are dealing with irregular scenarios where these would have to be done partially in bulk and on an individual basis in many instances.<\/p>\n

In the latest version 5.1 (released March 20 or 23, 2020) we created a tool to specifically allow the interest rate to be changed to 0.00% or reduced by x% for a determined period of time.<\/p>\n

NOTE: If you do not<\/strong> wish to give borrowers a break with the interest rate, skip step 1. The interest rate will remain unchanged and accrued interest will be compounded if you are charging Compound interest. If you are using Simple interest you can also capitalize that interest with the right mouse click on the last line with payment of 0.00 :<\/p>\n

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Steps:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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  1. Change interest rate to 0.00% (or other rate)<\/li>\n
  2. \u00a0In the “Post Payment” tool, export the payments to be “cancelled” (deferred)<\/li>\n
  3. Post payments to 0.00 (or other amount) in the “Post Payment” tool<\/li>\n
  4. Add new (deferred) payments at end of loan<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n


    \n1. Change interest rate to 0.00% (or other rate)<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Let’s do an example:<\/p>\n

    Normal payment schedule before the 0.00% interest for 3 months:<\/p>\n

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    We wish to stop charging interest for the months of April<\/strong>, May<\/strong> and June<\/strong> for the loans highlighted in blue below.<\/p>\n

    In the Main Margill window, select (highlight) the desired loans. This shortcut must then be used: “Ctrl Alt Shift i”. This window will appear with a new option “Add End date of rate change”. In normal situations this is kind of difficult to understand since a little illogical… We will probably delete this option in version 5.2…<\/p>\n

    Enter as such:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    You will be prompted to do a backup – PLEASE do this just in case you enter the wrong dates – you don’t want to have to change back your interest rate loan by loan!<\/p>\n

    In the example, notice two new lines with Rate change. So rate of 0% as of 04-01-2020 and back to 7.98% on 07-01-2020 (we temporarily displayed the “Start Date” column which is normally hidden):<\/p>\n

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    \n2. In the Post Payment tool, export the payments to be cancelled\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

    We first wish to find all payments to be deferred. Go to Tools > Post Payments (a very powerful tool!), check the box called “Use date interval” and enter the proper dates to find all such payments. Press on Refresh.<\/p>\n

    These are all the payments we wish to defer (so a total amount of 26,149.20 in this scenario -“Interval” amount):<\/p>\n

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    Right click in the window and “Export to Excel” – save the file which we will be using in step 4 to re-import the deferred payments.<\/p>\n

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    \n3. Post payments to 0.00 (or other amount) in the “Post Payment” tool<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Stay in the “Post Payment” tool with the current list of payments. Right click with the mouse and choose this option:<\/p>\n

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    You also could have clicked the “Select All” button and the option to change the Line statuses would have been there as with the right mouse click.<\/p>\n

    Notice the special Line status that was created: “Deferred Pmt (0.00)”. This would have been created previously through Tools > Settings > System Settings (Administrators) > Line Payment statuses (this is a “No payment” type Line status that must be = 0.00):<\/em><\/p>\n

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    No Automatic fees<\/a> will apply to this Line status – contrary to the usual “Unpaid Pmt” Line status if such a fees rule had been activated.<\/p>\n

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    NOTE<\/strong>: If you are monitoring the Outstanding amounts, you should change the “Expect. Pmt” column amounts to 0.00 for each payment, otherwise these amounts will become outstanding. A slight pain to do one by one if you have hundreds or thousands of loans!\u00a0As of version 5.2 you can specify that the “Expected Pmt” for specific Line statuses must = 0.00. This will save a huge amount of time since the “Expect. Pmt” will automatically become 0.00 (go to Tools > Settings > Line payment statuses > check the “Expected Pmt = 0” column for the “Deferred Pmt (0.00)” (or named as you wish) Line status).<\/p>\n

    If you do not do this in version 5.2, then double click in each cell and delete:<\/p>\n

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     <\/p>\n

    Now press on “Apply”.\u00a0The window will become blank after the payment processing stating the number of Records updated. They are now managed and payments<\/em> 0.00. In our example, notice now an ending balance because of the three deferred payments:<\/p>\n

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    \n4. Add new (deferred) payments at end of loan<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Adding the deferred payments at the end of the loan is the more arduous step because of the date issues.<\/p>\n

    To import the payments back into Margill, we will be using the “Post Payment” tool once again but with the “Bulk Payment Import” option that allows us to import new payments via an Excel sheet.<\/p>\n

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    All we need to import the deferred payments back to each loan individually are 3 columns (and other optional ones):<\/p>\n