Before running Mifos, you can configure it to support your organizational structure.  Configuration is an important stage to ensure that Mifos meets your business requirements optimally. Because some settings in Mifos can only be changed from their default values once, before Mifos is run for the first time, you should review the default Mifos configuration.  See our Mifos Configuration Guide to learn more about these settings.

The below steps outline how to use a custom configuration. However, to keep this install simple, I'm going to use the default configuration and make no changes.

1.  
   1. Using the Default Configuration: A default configuration is provided. If you want to quickly get Mifos up and running to try it out, then no configuration is needed.
   2. Using a Custom Configuration: This is a very important step in setting up Mifos to match your business processes - in Mifos there are a number of one-time settings you must configure properly before running the application for the first time.  Please read over the Mifos Configuration Guide to know the different Mifos parameters you can configure. These include:
      1. Setting your Language and Locale
      2. Accounting settings including your Chart of Accounts for general ledger transactions, rules for interest, rounding, etc. 
      3. Calendar settings including working days, available workflow states, etc. 
      4. Client settings including Officer Hierarchy (whether or not Centers exist)
      5. Process settings such as order of transaction import for M-PESA
      6. Reporting settings such as allowing of back-dated transactions
      7. Trapdoor settings that can only be configured one time. 
      8. If you created a MIFOS_CONF environment variable (directory for Mifos custom configuration files) in the previous step you can now follow the Mifos Configuration Guide for further details and options.  
          
   3. Changing the Default Mifos Configuration: To make changes to the default configuration, edit the file config/applicationConfiguration.custom.properties to the MIFOS_CONF directory defined in the previous step, Step 2.
   4. Changing the Default Database Connection Settings: To use non-default settings for your database connection -- such as a different port number, user name, or password -- edit the file config/local.properties to the MIFOS_CONF directory defined in Step 2.

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