Written by the Kopesha team · Last reviewed 23 September 2026 · No lender pays for these guides · How we write them
What a schedule is for
A repayment schedule turns an agreement into a list of dates and amounts. It is the document you will actually use — not the contract, which you will read once — and it is the one to ask for before you sign rather than after.
Every lender's paper looks a little different, but the columns carry the same four facts: which installment this is, when it is due, how much it is, and what is left after it is paid.
A schedule, read line by line
Suppose you borrow TZS 600,000 and the total repayable is 780,000 over six monthly installments. Each installment is 130,000. After the first payment you have paid 130,000 and 650,000 remains. After the second, 260,000 is paid and 520,000 remains. The final line should leave zero — if it does not, something is wrong before you have even started.
A licensed Tier 2 lender must show each installment split into principal, interest and fees, with its due date (Regulation 39); if yours does not, ask for it. The split is useful: it shows how much of the payment is reducing the debt and how much is the price of borrowing. On a reducing balance the interest part shrinks month by month; on flat interest it stays the same throughout, which is itself a clear answer to which kind of loan you have.
Three things to check before you leave the office
First: does the last line reach zero? Add the installments up. If six payments of 130,000 come to 780,000 and the total on the contract says 780,000, the schedule and the agreement are telling the same story.
Second: is the first date realistic? A weekly loan disbursed on Friday with the first payment due on Monday is asking for money before the stock has sold. Ask for the first date to sit after your first expected income, and most lenders will move it if you ask before signing.
Third: do the dates avoid the days you have no money? If your customers pay at month end, a payment due on the 28th is harder than one due on the 3rd. Nobody will offer to change this, and most lenders will agree if asked.
Keep your own copy
Photograph the schedule and keep the picture. Tick each line as you pay it and write the receipt number beside it. It takes ten seconds and it is the only record that is yours rather than the lender's.
Where the institution sends an SMS receipt for each payment, keep those messages too. Two independent records of the same payment settle almost every dispute in a minute.
When a payment does not appear
It happens: cash handed to a field officer, a transfer to the wrong till, a receipt book that was not written up. Go back with the date, the amount and the receipt or the mobile-money message. A specific claim — "I paid 130,000 on the 14th, transaction QJ4R7" — is resolved; a general one is argued about.
Ask for a statement of the loan showing every payment received. You are entitled to know what the institution's own books say about you, and a lender that will not show you is telling you something worth hearing.
If the schedule stops fitting your life
Schedules are not sacred. If your income changes — a season ends, a contract is lost, somebody falls ill — say so before the date you will miss. Restructuring is ordinary business: a longer term, smaller installments, sometimes a month's pause. It usually costs more in total interest, and it is far cheaper than default.
Get the new schedule in writing, and keep the old one. A restructure agreed on the phone and never printed is a dispute waiting for the month you forget the details.
Sources
This article is general information about borrowing in Tanzania. It is not advice about any particular lender, and the worked examples are examples only — not a quote or an offer from anybody.
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