How LoanCompass works

1. Add the person. A name is enough. An email address is optional and only matters if you want them to get reminders or see the loan themselves.
2. Record the loan. Amount, currency, the date you lent it, and either a single due date or one of six monthly repayment plans. Add a monthly interest rate if you charge one.
3. Log repayments as they arrive. The outstanding balance, the remaining schedule and what is due this month are all derived from the payments — you never maintain them by hand.

• Repayment plansThe six monthly plans a loan can use, what each one does to the payment size, and how to pick between them.
• Interest rates are monthlyEvery rate in LoanCompass is per month, not per year. What that means for the figure you type in.
• OverpaymentsWhere the extra money goes when someone pays more than the installment, and what it does to the schedule.
• Late paymentsHow interest accrues on an overdue loan, once per month, and why it compounds on the balance rather than the principal.
• Recording loans and repaymentsAdding a person, writing down a loan you already made, logging repayments, and correcting a mistake.

It is worth being precise about this, because the category is full of products that do move money and the difference matters:

• Not a lender or a broker. It does not offer, arrange, underwrite or fund loans.
• Not a payment processor or escrow. No money passes through it. Recording a repayment records that a repayment happened somewhere else — in cash, by bank transfer, however you settled.
• Not a legal agreement. What you record here is a private record. It does not create or enforce a contract, and nothing in the product is legal or financial advice.
• Not a currency converter. Each loan carries its own currency and every total is reported per currency. LoanCompass never applies an exchange rate, so two currencies stay two figures.

A ledger holds information about someone other than the person keeping it, so the boundaries are fixed rather than configurable:

• You see every person and loan on your own ledger, and nothing on anyone else's.
• A borrower who holds an account under the email you recorded can sign in to see the balance, charges and schedule on their own loans only. They cannot edit your records and cannot see anyone else you have lent to.
• A borrower can propose a repayment and request a new loan. Both are proposals — they land in your inbox and change nothing until you accept.

A borrower who has an account is emailed three days before a payment is due, by a scheduled job rather than by you — the reminder does not have to come from the person owed the money, which is usually the awkward part. On your side, the dashboard shows what is due this month and what is overdue, and arrears keep accruing interest if the loan carries a rate.

When you do need to follow up directly, the loan page composes the message for you — a text or an email pre-written with the loan name, the outstanding balance in its own currency, and a link to the borrower's own view of it. Nothing is sent without you pressing send, and a settled loan offers no chase at all.