Ayibongwe02/Stokvel-App

A multi-tenant Flask app that gives every South African stokvel (informal savings group) the record-keeping, transparency, and forward planning that a bank account alone doesn't provide — group membership, a shared ledger, live statistical forecasting per member, and admin-controlled payouts, all isolated per group and backed by a real database # Stokvel Forecasting Platform A multi-tenant Flask app that gives every South African stokvel (informal savings group) the record-keeping, transparency, and forward planning that a bank account alone doesn't provide — group membership, a shared ledger, live statistical forecasting per member, and admin-controlled payouts, all isolated per group and backed by a real database instead of a spreadsheet. ## The problem Stokvels move an estimated R50+ billion a year in South Africa, and an estimated 1 in 4 adults belongs to one. Structurally, though, most stokvels are still run the way they were forty years ago: a treasurer's notebook, a WhatsApp group, and a spreadsheet that only one person understands. That creates real, recurring problems: - **No shared source of truth.** Members have to trust the treasurer's word on who's paid, who hasn't, and what the group's balance actually is — there's no record they can check themselves. - **Disputes are hard to resolve.** When a member disputes a contribution or a payout, "check the notebook" isn't a great audit trail, and there's no record of who approved what, or when. - **No way to see trouble coming.** A member who's quietly missed two contributions in a row looks the same as one who's on track, right up until the group needs the money and it isn't there. - **Payouts rely on manual coordination.** Rotation order, approval thresholds, and "has everyone agreed" tend to live in someone's head or a chat thread, not in a system that enforces them. - **Onboarding a new member is manual.** Someone has to explain the rules, add them to every group chat, and manually back-fill their history. This app addresses each of those directly: a shared, per-group ledger that every member can see; role-based admin controls with an audit log for every state change; a live forecast per member that flags irregular contribution patterns before they become a shortfall; a configurable withdrawal-approval workflow instead of an ad-hoc group deci …