A Secure Web-Based Investment Club Management System with Integrated Accounting and Role-Based Access Control

Abstract

Cooperative savings and investment clubs play a crucial role in domestic finance in sub-Saharan Africa, but most rely on handwritten records that are error-prone, vulnerable to fraud, and easily lost. This paper describes the design and development of an online Investment Club Management System (ICMS) that digitises the entire operating cycle of a cooperative savings and loan society. The system integrates type-safe client–server communication, role-based access control, and a structured Know Your Customer onboarding process. A four-stage loan workflow is implemented with capacity-aware guarantor allocation, alongside automated amortisation and double-entry accounting within a general ledger framework. The proposed design improves data integrity, operational transparency, and financial reporting accuracy. Experimental evaluation demonstrates reliable performance and consistency in transaction processing. The system enhances transparency and efficiency and provides an architectural template for developing secure financial management systems for community organisations.

Introduction

The text describes the development of a modern cooperative financial management system (ICMS) designed to improve the way informal savings and loan groups in Nigeria operate, where traditional systems (ajo, esusu, adashe) often suffer from errors, fraud, lack of transparency, and poor accounting practices.

It highlights that although some web-based solutions exist, they are limited because they lack proper accounting integration, strong identity verification (KYC), structured guarantor management, and comprehensive financial reporting. To address these gaps, the proposed system introduces a complete end-to-end platform that includes KYC onboarding, role-based access control, loan workflows with guarantor limits, double-entry accounting, audit logs, and automated financial statements.

The system is built using a modern full-stack TypeScript architecture (React, tRPC, Express, Drizzle ORM, MySQL), ensuring strong type safety, scalability, and reliability. Security is enforced through layered role-based access control, JWT authentication, and server-side authorization to prevent unauthorized access and privilege escalation.

A key innovation is the strict guarantor governance rule, which prevents self-guaranteeing and limits each member to two active guarantees. The system also includes a structured KYC process where user identity verification is required before access to financial features is granted, with secure document storage and admin approval workflows.

Conclusion

The design and implementation of a web-based Investment Club Management System that supports the lifecycle of operation of cooperative savings and lending activities have been presented in this paper. The system combines KYC onboarding, role-based access control, structured loan pipeline with constraint on guarantor capacity, automatic amortisation scheduling, and double-entry accounting all in a single and type-safe full-stack architecture. A qualitative assessment shows that the specified functional requirements are addressed and that the system can be used by the small and medium-sized cooperative societies. Its key contributions are the formalisation of guarantor governance and implementation of double-entry accounting within the workflow, which fill in gaps in current cooperative management systems. Future development will involve adding functionality to interface with local payment systems, support enforcement of accounting constraints on a database level, and a quantitative usability test with end users. This work is relevant to the digital transformation of informal and semi-formal financial systems in developing economies and is applicable to cooperative societies in search of a better way to achieve transparency, accountability, and operational efficiency.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Ayodeji Bolanle Balogun, Babajide Adelaja Ojo. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.