Mifos (The Community for Open Source Microfinance)
Web Page: https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/display/RES/Google+Summer+of+Code+2013+Ideas
Mailing List: mailto:mifos-developer@lists.sourceforge.net
Create a World of 3 Billion Maries. Fight Poverty by Building Apps on the Mifos X Platform
Mifos X is an open-source cloud-based platform for delivering financial services to the poor. We use open source technology and the power of community to scale financial inclusion worldwide to achieve our shared vision of creating a world of 3 Billion Maries, a world where each individual has access to the financial services to create a better life for themself and their family. We connect the on-the-ground organizations serving the base of the pyramid with open source contributors building applications on top of the platform to enable financial inclusion to the poor.
COSM has grown and evolved from the Mifos Initiative which was launched by Grameen Foundation in 2006 and spun out in 2011. Currently more than 1.1 million clients are being served by the 45 microfinance institutions using Mifos to run their organization. Mifos is the back-end information system used to process, track, manage, and report on the portfolio of financial services (microcredit, micro-savings, micro-insurance, etc) they’re delivering to their client base.
Pioneered by Muhammad Yunus, microfinance and more broadly financial inclusion has proven itself to be a powerful and essential tool to allow the poor to create a more dignified life for themselves and their families. Currently microfinance institutions reach just under 200 million individuals - yet more than 3 billion people still lack access to financial services. Our community lives by its vision of 3 Billion Maries to help financial inclusion close this gap.
We invite you to join our collective movement to bring technology-enabled financial inclusion to the poor. Our new platform, Mifos X, gives any individual in the world the opportunity to build applications to fight poverty. To see Mifos in action watch our video on technology-enabled financial inclusion at Grameen Koota, our largest Mifos user in Bangalore, India.
Visit http://mifos.org and http://openmf.org to learn more.
Projects
- Data Import Tool for Mifos X Getting their initial data into Mifos X when setting the platform up for the first time is often time-consuming and difficult for MFIs. This project will create an Excel-based data import tool for directly importing bulk data into Mifos X. Using the REST APIs exposed by the platform, this tool will import the following data: Client Details, Client Loan and Saving account details, Client Fee Details, Client repayment History as well as Center / Group details and Personnel Details. Upon completing their initial organizational and loan product configuration, the MFI can generate a pre-formatted Excel template to import their data in. These templates will primarily be used for inputting manual paper-based or other Excel-based data but could also be used for migration from another system database.
- Server-side pagination and Sorting This project focuses on adding support for server side pagination and sorting to the MifosX platform and the reference user interface. This project has a worldwide impact, there are multitudes of methodologies and delivery channels which deliver financial services to the poor. On the platform through the API, Mifoscommunity has the ability to build applications to allow Mifos to support new markets and scale more services to the poor in need. For large financial institutions, it is imperative that server side pagination and sorting are supported so that they can build scalable applications on top of the Mifos X platform
- User Generated Documents at MifosX platform MFI’s typically generate client-facing documents (whose format varies from MFI to MFI) from their MIS. These documents mostly include simple Client (Client registration documents) and Loan (Loan Contracts, Passbooks etc.) documents. This project aims to enable non technical end users to create well formatted reports.
- XBRL Reporting Integration This project idea originates from the MIX proposed pilot XBRL program. XBRL, a standard for financial reporting, have been applied widely in financial companies and organizations. Since Mifos is a management system for microfinance and MIX is an important platform for microfinance performance data and analysis, it is necessary to implement the XBRL reporting on MifosX platform to fit the MIX reporting standard. Besides that, by adopting XBRL on MifosX platform, MifosX will largely reduce the time the MFIs spend on generating financial reports to their funders and regulators. As XBRL is gradually being adopted by more and more institutes, XBRL reporting should be a must-have function in microfinance software.