Christelle is a teacher and a member of two tontines: "Les Amis", ten members, 20,000 F every month, and "Bureau", 5,000 F every week with her colleagues. In the first one, she received the payout in July: 200,000 F. Three months later, the treasurer tells her she still has three contributions left to pay before the cycle ends. Christelle, for her part, counted two. She has no way to settle it: her contributions are noted on scraps of paper and in mobile payment messages, mixed in with those of the second tontine.
She isn't trying to challenge the treasurer: she just wants to be able to check, and to know every month what her two tontines cost her in total. She doesn't need the treasurer to use anything: everything happens in her own workspace.
She decides to treat each tontine as a third party with whom money flows both ways: she pays contributions, and once per cycle she receives the payout. Three pieces of information per transaction are enough:
Two steps are enough:
| What happens | The transaction to record |
|---|---|
| You contribute | Expense (the button is called "Pay out") |
| You receive the payout | Income |
Watch out for the reversal compared to the treasurer. For them, a contribution comes into the cash account. For you, it leaves your pocket: it's an expense.
Have a Personal workspace
If you don't have a workspace yet, choose the « Personal » in the setup wizard: it only gives access to Contacts, Calendar and Finance, which is all this guide needs. Step-by-step setup is covered in Flore's paycheck. If you're already tracking your paycheck there, simply add what follows to what you already have.
Your money accounts
One account per real pocket of money — Cash, Orange Money / MTN MoMo, bank. Leave the Cashier field set to -- Myself --.
Don't create a "tontine" account. The tontine doesn't hold your money: the treasurer holds it. You track it through the contact (step 2), not through an account.
Create a contact for the tontine
A contact per tontine :
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Name / Company name | Tontine Les Amis |
| Notes / Comments | 10 membres — 20 000 F chaque mois — ma main : séance 7 (juillet 2026) — trésorier : M. Fotso |
The contact represents the tontine, not its treasurer: if the treasurer changes, your history stays in the same place. Put in Notes / Comments what you need to know without having to look it up: amount, frequency, your turn in the rotation, the treasurer's name.
Faster — in the transaction form, click the "Create a contact" link under the Payer / Payee field. The window only asks for Last name(s), First name(s) and Phone (notes are added afterward from the contact's record), then the newly created contact is selected right away. Typing an unknown name in the field doesn't create anything.
Record a contribution
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Account | Cash (or Mobile Money, depending on how you paid) |
| Operation | Expense |
| Label | Monthly contribution |
| Amount | 20 000 |
| Category | COTISATION TONTINE |
| Payee | Tontine Les Amis |
| Note (Advanced options) | Session of 05/03/26 |
Click Pay out. A "Confirm transaction" window opens: click "Yes, I confirm".
The date and time are those of the entry. The "Advanced options" link gives access to Date/time (useful if you record it later), Reference and Note, where you write down the session. From the second entry onward, the label, category and payee are suggested to you: all that's left is to write the note.
The same label at every session, the session in the Note. An identical label from one session to the next ("Monthly contribution" for Les Amis, "Weekly tontine" for Bureau) lets the dashboard recognize your contributions as a recurring expense (see "In your budget"). The session date, on the other hand, goes in the Note ("Session of 05/03/26"): you still keep track session by session.
Your account needs to hold the money. By default, an account refuses an expense greater than its balance: on an account at 0, the contribution is rejected with the message "Insufficient balance for this transaction". Record your income (paycheck, payment) on this account first.
Category: click the exact row. When you type a name, the list also suggests categories that start the same way, and pressing Enter selects the first highlighted row. Type COTISATION, and the category recorded might end up being a similarly-named one: click the row that matches exactly what you want.
Record the payout received
Same screen, selecting Income :
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Account | whoever received the money |
| Operation | Income |
| Label | My payout |
| Amount | 200 000 |
| Category | MAIN TONTINE |
| Payer | Tontine Les Amis |
| Note (Advanced options) | Session of 05/07/26 |
Click Receive. If you also contributed that day, record the contribution separately (step 3): don't deduct it from the amount received, otherwise your totals will no longer match the treasurer's.
A fine? Expense, category AMENDE TONTINE, payee the tontine. It doesn't count as a contribution.
Where do I stand in this tontine?
This is the question Christelle couldn't settle. It's resolved in four steps:
- 1Finances → Transactions.
- 2Left-hand panel, Quick period → This year (by default the screen only shows the current day).
- 3Filter Payee →
Tontine Les Amis. - 4Click Search.
The indicators at the top of the screen give the answer:
| Indicator | What it means for a member |
|---|---|
| Outflows | what you've contributed |
| Receipts | what you've received |
| Net balance | your position (below) |
Your position
This is exactly the Net balance shown on screen.
| Position | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Positive | you've received more than you've paid in: you still owe this amount to the group |
| Negative | you've paid in more than you've received: the group owes you this amount, you haven't had your turn yet |
Once you've received your payout, this positive position is the amount you still have left to contribute. Divided by the amount of one contribution, it gives the number of sessions remaining: 60,000 ÷ 20,000 = 3 sessions. The treasurer was right — but this time Christelle can verify it, line by line, in the list on the Transactions screen.
A full cycle| Time | Contributed | Received | Position | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| After session 3 | 60 000 F | 0 F | −60 000 F | the group owes you 60,000 F |
| After session 7 (payout received) | 140 000 F | 200 000 F | +60 000 F | you still owe 60,000 F, i.e. 3 contributions |
| After session 10 | 200 000 F | 200 000 F | 0 F | cycle finished, you're even |
If you've also recorded fines, they get added to Outflows. To see only the contributions, add the filter Categories → COTISATION TONTINE.
How much do my tontines cost me?
This is the case where the tool helps the most: Christelle has two, and soon a third within her family.
- 1One contact per tontine (
Tontine Les Amis,Tontine Bureau,Tontine Famille), the same categoryCOTISATION TONTINEfor all of them. - 2The situation of one tontine : filter Payee on that tontine.
- 3What all your tontines cost you : filter Categories → COTISATION TONTINE, with no payee filter, period "This month". The Outflows total is your monthly commitment.
- 4What you've received in total : same thing with MAIN TONTINE, reading the Receipts.
| Tontine | Frequency | This month's contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Les Amis | monthly | 20 000 F |
| Bureau | weekly | 4 × 5 000 F = 20 000 F |
| Total for the month | 40 000 F |
What a tontine becomes in the dashboard
If you're also tracking your budget with zBilling.net (see Flore's paycheck), here's what happens on Finance → Overview:
- 1The Expense breakdown — 30 days widget ranks COTISATION TONTINE (and AMENDE TONTINE) among your expenses, with the amount and the percentage. It's forced savings, not spending, but it is indeed money going out.
- 2A payout received appears as income for the month and pushes up your surplus that month. Don't read it as a lasting increase: filter on the MAIN TONTINE category to isolate it.
- 3The Estimated financial runway widget only counts as a recurring expense those expenses whose label is strictly identical at least twice over twelve months. That's why contributions always keep the same label ("Monthly contribution", "Weekly tontine"): that way they get counted. A label that changed at every session (Session 03, Session 04…) would exclude them; session-by-session tracking is done in the Note.
- 4The Overall balance — all accounts includes money you've set aside in a reserve (see below).
Set money aside before the session
If you contribute large sums and want to avoid running short on session day, set money aside gradually through the month:
- 1Create an account Tontine reserve (Finances → Comptes → New account, Cash till or Mobile payment).
- 2Every time you set money aside, make a Transfer from your usual account to the reserve (Transfer button, in Finance → Accounts or Finance → Transactions). Choose the source account, the destination account and the amount, click "Transfer now!", then confirm.
- 3On session day, record the contribution from "Tontine reserve" (step 3, Account field).
The reserve's balance tells you at any time how much you've already set aside for the next contribution.
Keep the rules and the evidence
zBilling.net doesn't let you attach a file directly to a transaction. However, every contact record has a section Files (("Add a file" button):) :
- 1a photo of the rules of the tontine, stored on the tontine's record;
- 2a photo of the notebook page of the treasurer's after each session, or a screenshot of a mobile payment confirmation message.
On the day of a disagreement, the evidence is stored in the same place as your numbers.
What Christelle knows now
After one cycle of recording entries, Christelle no longer has to rely on her memory or the treasurer's. She knows, session by session, what she's paid and received in each tontine, how many contributions she has left before she's even, and what the whole thing costs her every month. When a figure differs from what's announced, she has the list of transactions and the photo of the notebook to discuss it calmly.
Habits to build
- 1One contact per tontine, not per treasurer.
- 2Always write labels and categories the same way. COTISATION TONTINE and Cotisation tontine produce two separate lines in your totals, and a label that changes at every session excludes your contributions from the financial runway calculation. The label stays fixed, the session goes in the Note.
- 3Click the exact row in the category list. Pressing Enter selects the first highlighted row, which may be a similarly-named category.
- 4Record it the same day, right after leaving the session: after a month, you no longer remember which account the money came from.
- 5Fund the account before contributing. An account at 0 refuses the expense.
- 6Change the period. The Transactions screen opens on the current day: if you don't see anything, click "This year".
- 7Don't deduct the contribution from the payout amount: two separate transactions, just like in the treasurer's notebook.
- 8Don't confuse a transfer with an expense. Setting money aside is a transfer, not a contribution.
What this guide doesn't cover
- no automatic reminder before the session date: use your phone's reminder;
- no tontine calendar or view of the rotation order: note your turn in the contact's record;
- no link with the treasurer: your numbers are your own, they don't sync with their notebook, you need to compare them manually;
- no check that the payout amount received is correct: it's up to you to compare it with what the treasurer announces.
This guide is written for the member. If you're the treasurer yourself, the logic is reversed: a contribution comes into the cash account instead of going out, and it's up to you to keep the tontine's books so the whole group works from the same numbers. See Who paid at this session?.
Contacts and Finance are available for free in the Personal workspace — no credit card required.
