Set up branches

Every transaction in the MFI Suite belongs to a branch. Set them up before you create users, products, or members — moving a transaction's branch after the fact requires GL re-mapping and breaks the SOC 2 audit chain.

The branch model

The MFI Suite models branches as res.branch, a child of res.company for a single-company tenant or as siblings for a holding-company tenant. Five levels are supported:

Create a branch

From MFI → Configuration → Branches → New the wizard collects:

• Name and code: code is uppercase, 3–6 chars, used in the member-number sequence (KAK-2026-00001).
• Parent branch: drives the hierarchy and the consolidation roll-up.
• Physical address: street, town, county, GPS coordinates (used for the CBK geographical distribution return).
• Operating hours: feeds the dunning calendar and iBANK opening hours.
• Cash policy: daily withdrawal limit, vault threshold, dual-control limit (paired with the two-person rule).
• Bank accounts: at least one operational bank account per branch (KCB or Co-op Bank typically), one M-Pesa paybill if the branch collects via mobile money.

Branch-level chart of accounts

By default the chart of accounts is consolidated at the company level. To get a per-branch P&L you must enable analytic accounting and tag every journal line with the branch's analytic account.

# mfi_base/data/branch_default_accounts.xml — shipped
<record id="branch_analytic_plan" model="account.analytic.plan">
    <field name="name">Branches</field>
    <field name="applicability_ids" eval="[(0,0,{
        'account_prefix': '5,6,7',
        'business_domain': 'general',
        'applicability': 'mandatory'
    })]"/>
</record>

Cash tills and vault

Each branch carries one vault and one or more cash tills. The shipped mfi_cash_policy module enforces:

• Vault opening balance + daily till loadings ≤ branch cash limit.
• Single till withdrawal ≤ KES 100,000 — anything above requires two-person concurrence (handled by mfi_two_person).
• End-of-day till closeout mandatory before 18:00 — branch unable to open the next day without it.
• Vault reconciliation weekly, with internal audit sign-off recorded on mfi.cash.vault.reconciliation.

Branch bank accounts

Wire each branch to at least one bank journal. The shipped naming convention is BR-<branch-code>-<bank>-<currency> e.g. BR-KAK-KCB-KES.

Branch-restricted users

Once branches exist, every user (loan officer, teller, supervisor) must be assigned a default branch and an allowed-branches set. The record rule on mfi.loan filters by branch_id in allowed_branch_ids — without this assignment, a user can read the system-wide loan list and the SOC 2 evidence collector flags it.

Worked scenarios

Reference

Fields on res.branch

Default cash limits by branch level

Troubleshooting

See also

• Roles
• Two Person
• Treasury
• Cash Policy