Feature catalogue

The repayment schedule

A lending account carries a plan of what the customer pays, and when.

Two panels show that plan, and they answer different questions. This article says which is which, how an instalment is worked out, and what moves the schedule afterwards.

Which panel answers which question

Panel The question it answers What a row is
Instalments What does the customer pay, and on what date? One instalment
Schedule What does the platform expect to happen on this account? Any projected movement — an instalment, interest, a fee

The Instalments panel appears only on an account that has instalments. An overdraft or a call deposit does not show it at all.

The Schedule panel is on every account. It stays empty until the account is active and has something projected ahead of it.

Both look forward. Neither is a record of what happened — that is the transaction list. See reading the transaction list.

A third panel, Forecast, answers what if. The Schedule panel answers what is expected. See forecasting an account.

flowchart TD
    P["The instalment plan<br/>due dates and amounts"] --> W["The platform walks the<br/>remaining term day by day"]
    R["The account's rate, fees<br/>and interest dates"] --> W
    W --> I["Instalments panel<br/>what the customer pays"]
    W --> S["Schedule panel<br/>every expected movement"]
    S --> SP["Capital and Interest<br/>on each instalment row"]
    style P fill:#1e3a5f,color:#ffffff
    style R fill:#1e3a5f,color:#ffffff
    style W fill:#0e7490,color:#ffffff
    style I fill:#059669,color:#ffffff
    style S fill:#059669,color:#ffffff
    style SP fill:#7c3aed,color:#ffffff

What the Instalments panel shows

The panel lists every instalment in the plan, earliest first, with a count beside the heading.

Marker Meaning
A tick The instalment has already fallen due
A filled dot This is the next one due
No marker Still ahead

Two views share the list. The list view shows one row per instalment. The summary view collapses runs of equal amounts, so a level plan reads as a single line — “54 ×” and one figure — instead of 54 rows.

A bar chart sits beside the list. Bars for instalments already due are greyed, so the shape of what is left is visible at a glance.

Where the plan is stepped or escalating, a line underneath describes it in words.

How an instalment is worked out

The platform solves for it. It walks the whole remaining term, day by day, charging interest and fees exactly as the live account will, and adjusts the instalment until the balance reaches zero on the account’s end date.

Three things follow, and all three surprise people:

Plan shapes

Most products use one level amount for the whole term. Where the product allows it, a plan can be shaped:

Shape What it does
Level Every instalment the same
Stepped Blocks of a stated count and amount, in sequence
Escalating Instalments rise by a set percentage each period
Pinned Individual instalments are fixed by hand, and the rest solve around them

Which shapes a product offers is part of your organisation’s product setup. On a product set up for a single amount, the panel offers only that.

Alex takes a 36-month loan from Woodgrove Bank, and the last 6 instalments are fixed at 12,000. The platform solves the first 30 against that constraint, so the balance still lands on zero at the end. The six fixed instalments are left exactly as entered.

An escalating plan works the same way. On a 36-month plan escalating 5% a period, the platform solves the first instalment, and every later one is that amount grown by 5% compounding. Only the base amount is solved; the curve does the rest.

What happens to the leftover

Interest and rounding rarely land the balance exactly on zero. How the plan handles that is a choice on the plan:

Setting What it does
Adjust last instalment to zero Trues up the final instalment so the balance lands on zero
Balloon Pins the final instalment at an amount you enter, and amortises the rest against it
None Leaves the plan alone; whatever is left is still owed at the end

With None, the calculator shows the end balance in red when it is not zero. That is a warning, not a refusal — some products are meant to end with a balance.

Sam takes a 36-month loan with a balloon of 100,000. The final instalment is pinned at 100,000, and the other 35 are solved so the balance is exactly 100,000 when that last one falls due.

Recalculating a plan

On an active account the panel carries a Calculate button. It opens the calculator, where you can reshape the plan, pin rows, change the leftover handling, and recalculate.

Opening the calculator changes nothing. It shows the plan as saved, and tells you where those saved instalments leave the balance. Recalculating is something you choose — the button is the whole point.

A recalculated plan is staged, not applied. It joins the account’s other staged changes and goes in when you submit them, which is also where it is reviewed. See countersign.

While a revised plan is staged, the panel says so in an amber banner, and the list shows the revised instalments rather than the saved ones.

Capital and interest

The Schedule panel splits each instalment into a Capital column and an Interest column, and the two add up to the instalment.

That split is a reading of the plan, not a second set of entries. How it is worked out, and why the balance falls by less than the customer paid, is how a repayment is recorded.

Two things about the columns are worth knowing at the panel:

An instalment absorbs the interest that has joined the balance since the previous one. Where nothing has joined the balance since, the instalment is all capital. That is why the final instalment often shows no interest at all — it is correct, not a gap.

On a product where interest never joins the balance — it is settled separately — every instalment is capital and the Interest column is empty throughout.

What the Schedule panel shows

Every movement the platform expects on the account, from the last processed day to the end of the term, in date order.

Column What it holds
Date The value date the movement is expected on
Transaction What the movement is — an instalment, interest, a fee
Capital The capital part, on instalment rows only
Interest The interest part, on instalment rows only
Amount The whole movement

The list is searchable and can be exported.

The Computed stamp

The heading carries Computed and a date. That is when the schedule was last worked out, and it is there because the schedule can be behind the account.

The platform recomputes a schedule on its own when something changes it — the account is activated or closed, its money lands, its rate moves, its dates move, or its plan is recalculated. Between those moments a schedule can be a little stale, which is why the stamp is on the page rather than hidden.

Recompute works it out again, on demand. It is safe to press at any time. It recalculates a projection from the account as it stands; it posts nothing and changes no balance.

Where your organisation takes a periodic data cut of the book, end of day brings any schedule that has fallen behind up to date first.

What moves the schedule

A rate change. Jordan’s plan is 1,000 a month. A rate change part-way through lifts the remaining instalments to 1,100 each. The instalment already due that month stays at 1,000 — a rate change never reaches back into an instalment that has already fallen due.

Whether a rate change moves the instalment at all is a product choice. Some products re-solve on the current term, so the instalment moves and the end date holds. Others hold the instalment, so the rate move works itself out over the term instead. Your organisation sets this per product. See changing a rate.

A change of end date. Woodgrove Bank draws 500,000 at a fixed 9%, accruing on an Actual/Actual basis, over 12 monthly redemptions. Pulling the end date in to month 6 leaves 6 redemptions of about 83,333.33 each, and nothing after the new end date.

The whole outstanding amount re-amortises over the instalments that remain. It does not leave the original instalments in place with one enormous final payment.

Pushing the end date the other way works the same. Moving that account’s end date out to month 18 gives it 18 redemptions, the last one on the new end date.

A change of payment dates. An account paying on the 1st is moved to the 15th part-way through. The instalment already taken on 1 June stays exactly as it was, at 1,000. The instalments ahead are replaced with new ones on the 15ths, at 990 each. The old future dates go; they no longer exist on the plan.

Lending more. Where the product lists it, a further advance re-solves the remaining instalments over the remaining term. See lending more on an existing account.

Not every change touches the plan. Which operations may move it is part of your organisation’s product setup, so a change of collection account leaves the plan alone even though it edits the account.

Instalments already due never move

Every recalculation pins the instalments up to the last processed day and solves only what is ahead. An instalment the customer has already been asked for is a fact, not a projection.

If a change would move one of those settled instalments — a correction, or a back-dated amendment — the platform restates the account from that date, so interest already charged is put right. See value dating.

A recalculation that changes nothing writes nothing. Reapplying the same figures leaves the account untouched, so there is no phantom entry to explain.

Due dates and business days

Due dates are worked out when the plan is created, from the payment schedule you chose on the account. The business day convention and the holiday calendars are applied then, so a date landing on a weekend or a holiday is already moved.

The instalment then falls due on that stored date. Later holiday changes do not shift a date that is already on the plan.

One exception protects the last instalment. Where the final due date is nudged past the end date by the convention, it is kept rather than dropped — the customer still owes the final payment.

See business day conventions for the conventions themselves, and day count conventions for how much interest a period is worth.

When a panel has nothing to show

What you see Why
No Instalments panel The account has no instalments
“No scheduled cash flows” The account has nothing projected — it is not active yet, has no end date, or is paid off

An account whose balance is fully repaid projects nothing ahead of it, so its Schedule panel is empty. That is the schedule agreeing with the balance, not a failure to compute.