Chamabora: One Honest Record of Your Chama's Money

A chama of ten members or fewer runs its entire book on Chamabora for free, permanently. Above ten it is KSh 1,000 a month, and the top tier — for registered SACCOs with no member limit — is KSh 8,000. Every plan carries the full feature set. The price follows nothing but how many members you have.

And until 30 April 2027 every group is free, whatever its size. Chamabora is giving the platform away while it gets groups trained and onto it, so a 60-member chama can run a full year of contributions, loans and AGM reports without paying anything. Confirm the current tiers on the Chamabora pricing page before you budget around them.

It is built and maintained by Mycrea Technologies, the Nairobi company behind this platform. One thing to be clear about from the start: Chamabora is record-keeping software. It reports on your group's money and never holds or moves it. It is not a bank, a SACCO or a payment service.

The one rule the whole thing is built on

No one confirms their own money. Every financial entry — a contribution, a loan repayment, an expense — needs two separate officials, and the person who records it cannot be the person who confirms it. A member reports their M-Pesa payment, a second official checks it, and only then does the balance move and a receipt number get issued.

That single rule removes the argument most chamas eventually have. When the treasurer records a deposit and also approves it, the group is trusting one person's memory and goodwill. When two sets of hands are required, there is a record either of them can point to.

Two smaller details matter more than they sound. The same M-Pesa code can never be entered twice, which kills the double-credit mistake. And an overpayment becomes a credit against future dues instead of a figure somebody has to remember until the next meeting.

Contributions, loans, expenses, meetings

Contributions follow whatever your group agreed — weekly, fortnightly, monthly or quarterly — and Chamabora works out what each member owes from the day they joined. Expected, paid and arrears per member, at any date you pick. That is the report that normally costs a secretary an evening with a calculator and a notebook.

Loans run as separate steps — application, approval, disbursement, repayment — each with its own authorisation. Interest can be flat or reducing balance, eligibility can be set as a multiple of a member's own savings, and repayments are applied penalty first, then interest, then principal, oldest instalment first. A loan cannot be disbursed beyond the cash the group actually holds; the system refuses rather than letting the book run negative. If your group is still arguing about what a rate works out to, our free loan repayment calculator settles it in a few seconds.

Expenses are submitted, approved by a second official, then marked paid — and only a paid expense touches the cash balance. So a cost that has been approved but not yet paid never makes the group look poorer than it is.

Meetings carry an attendance register, minutes, resolutions with the votes for, against and abstaining, and action items with owners and due dates. Once minutes are approved they are write-locked, so the record of a decision cannot quietly drift three months later when somebody remembers it differently.

Who can see what

Four roles — chairperson, treasurer, secretary and member — each seeing only what it should. A member checks their own position whenever they like and exports their own statement; they do not get everyone else's. Members' contact details are visible to officials only. Invitations are single-use and expire. Membership numbers are issued in sequence and never reused.

The audit log records every financial change with who made it and when. It is available to officials only, and it cannot be edited — not by the treasurer, not by the chairperson.

Reports come out as PDF for the AGM and CSV for your own analysis: member statements, arrears, the loan portfolio, income and expenditure, the cashbook, and the full audit trail. If your group wants those figures turned into something a bank or a landlord will accept, there are accountants and bookkeepers on Kaziiko who do exactly that work.

How you pay, and what happens if you stop

No card, no payment gateway. The chairperson or treasurer submits the M-Pesa reference for the month and it is verified against the receiving account before the plan activates. If a subscription lapses, nothing is deleted — records stay readable and exportable, and only new entries pause.

Three things are on the roadmap rather than in the product today, and it is worth knowing which: automatic M-Pesa collection through Safaricom's Daraja API, a SACCO module covering share capital, dividends and guarantors, and WhatsApp reminders for contributions and repayments. Today the collection side is officials recording and verifying codes by hand.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Chamabora free?

Groups of ten members or fewer are free permanently, with no trial expiry and no card. Every group of any size is free until 30 April 2027. After that the tiers run from KSh 1,000 a month up to KSh 8,000 for unlimited members — check the pricing page for the current figures.

Does Chamabora hold our money?

No. It records and reports on the group's money, which stays wherever your group keeps it. It is not a bank, a SACCO or a payment service, and it never moves funds.

Can we move across from a paper book?

Yes. You can set an opening balance, so the first month on the system reconciles against the cash your group actually counted rather than starting from zero.

Who built Chamabora?

Mycrea Technologies, a Nairobi software company that also builds and runs Kaziiko and takes on client work through its profile on Kaziiko.