A loan installment must skip one month
"Nadeem has a loan running. His daughter is getting married, so the company has agreed not to deduct this month. Next month it resumes. Do not disturb the rest of the schedule."
What is really being asked
Skip one deduction and leave everything else exactly as it is. The instinct is to go and look for a hold field on the loan, or to edit the schedule. Neither exists and neither is needed.
The loan schedule is a list of installments, each with a number, a date, an amount and a cleared mark. There is no hold column and no skip column. What you change instead is the Clearing amount on the period document, and the mechanism takes care of itself: an installment that is not cleared in this period is offered again in the next one. The loan simply finishes one period later.
What you need in place first
- Employee Loan Request approved and the loan on record.
- Employee Payroll Loan - this period's document, which is where loan deductions are pulled and the only place the skip is done.
- The month's Payroll not yet posted. If it is posted, start from a punch was wrong and payroll attendance is already made for the undo order.
- The client's decision in writing, because this is somebody choosing not to collect money.
Do this
Open Employee Payroll Loan for the period in question. The document pulls every employee's due installments and shows, per line, the Loan Amount, what is already Cleared, the Clearing amount for this period and the remaining Balance.
Find Nadeem's line and set Clearing to zero. That is the whole change.
The screen allows zero. It refuses only a negative figure, "Details - Line ID: 3 - Clearing Amount Cannot be less then zero", and a figure above the loan, "Details - Line ID: 3 - Clearing Amount Cannot be greater then Laon Amount". The spelling of the second message is as the screen shows it.
Put the reason somewhere. The screen has no reason field for a skipped installment, so write it in the document's notes, and in the client's own file. In six months nobody will remember why one month was missed, and a loan reconciliation will come back to you.
Save. No deduction is raised for a line whose Clearing is zero, and because the installment is not marked cleared, it stays outstanding.
Run Payroll unposted and confirm there is no loan deduction on Nadeem's payslip and the other men's deductions are untouched.
Next period, open the loan document again. The same installment is offered once more, because the pull takes every installment that is not yet cleared and whose date has passed. You do nothing except leave the Clearing at its normal figure.
What this does and does not change
- The schedule is not rewritten. Installment four is still installment four with its original date and amount.
- Nothing is lost. The loan recovers the same total.
- The loan finishes one period later than the original schedule said. If the client has told the man a final date, that date moves. Say so now.
- There is no interest adjustment. A skipped month does not recalculate interest.
A partial deduction works the same way
If the client wants half the installment this month rather than none, type half into Clearing. The installment is still not fully cleared, so the remainder is offered again next period. Same mechanism, same outcome, no schedule edit.
Where two clients differ
| One month skipped | The loan stopped until further notice | |
|---|---|---|
| What you do | Clearing to zero, this period only | Clearing to zero every period until told otherwise |
| Who remembers | You, from the notes | Nobody, and that is the problem |
| What to set up | Nothing | A monthly check on the loan document |
| The risk | Low | The loan quietly never recovers |
If the client wants an indefinite stop, tell him plainly that there is no field for it, so it becomes somebody's monthly job to leave the figure at zero. Then make sure the client names that somebody. An indefinite hold with nobody owning it is how a loan disappears.
How you prove it worked
- Run Payroll unposted. Nadeem's payslip must carry no loan deduction. Every other man's must carry his normal one.
- Compare the payroll's total loan recovery against last period's, minus Nadeem's installment. That is the number the client will check.
- On the loan document, confirm the installment still shows as not cleared and the Balance has not fallen.
- Next period, create the loan document and confirm the installment is offered again. If it is not, it was marked cleared, and the money will never be collected.
- Count the installments remaining against the original schedule. One more than you expected is correct.
What will go wrong
- The schedule is edited to push every date forward a month. Now the document and the agreement disagree, and so do the reports. Do not touch the schedule.
- A hold field is looked for and then invented by setting the installment amount to zero on the schedule. That really does lose the money.
- Clearing is left at zero the following period, because it was not changed back and nobody was watching. Check it the month after a skip, every time.
- The payroll was already posted when the request came in. Unwinding a posted payroll to skip one installment is almost never worth it. Collect it this month and give it back next month through Employee Additional Payment Or Deduction.
- Deleting the loan document to start again is more destructive than it looks: it un-clears the installments for everybody on it and removes the payment document it generated. Fix the one line instead.