Borrower Portal

The Borrower Portal is an add-on feature that enables borrowers to make payments, view their payment history, view their account (Borrower Portal) settings, and view and edit (update)(* the ability for the borrower to self-update is currently unavailable) their personal information within Bryt on behalf of the lender. 

Borrower Portal Settings
The borrower portal settings on the admin page are where you'll be able to customize the borrower portal view for your borrowers.
You'll be able to edit the borrower portal settings to change:

• Borrower Portal Title
• Show Title and Logo on Portal
• Editing the Borrower Portal Subdomain - This is a requirement - a subdomain must be declared (Saved under Admin - Portal Setup) to activate and be able to test/use your portal - Example: yourcompany.brytsoftware.com
  Note: A custom URL can be configured for a fee. Ex: YourCompanyNamePortal.com (excludes mention of Bryt) - You can reference pricing via our Customizations page and look for the 'White-label Custom Domain' option. 
• Portal Support Text (Displays text below the borrower portal interface to inform the borrower of support information to use if needed.)
  Note for Advanced Users - The '(supports html)' means you can insert a link such as: "Feel free to look this up <a href="https://www.google.com/" target="_blank"> via Google</a>." - in this example, there will be a link for the 'via Google' text to open a new tab and take the user there. 
• Borrower Portal Button and Button Text Color - You can Google 'Hex Color Picker' to find a color and hex code (# with 6 numbers/letters) to copy and paste into these fields. Entering text like 'Blue' will generate errors.  
• Enable or Disable Borrower Portal Modules (Account settings, Personal Information, ACH Payments, and Payment History.)

Borrower Portal Module Settings
Account Settings Module - After you click the 'Edit' button you'll be able to change the Module's Display Name via a text field. 
Ach Payments - After clicking the 'Edit' button it will prompt you with the option to designate a number of days prior to the due date that a borrower is unable to make a payment.

Admin Email Settings
Make sure that you have an email set up for your Bryt Account since this will be the email your borrowers will be receiving the Borrower Portal registration link and associated information, as well as various other email notices from.
To do this, go to your Admin tab, then click on 'Email Settings' in the left-hand column. Then verify that you have an email configured for your "Company Email 'from' Address:" field.

If it's not configured you'd click on the edit button just above the "Company Email 'from' Address" title and then type in your email, then finish by clicking on the 'Save Changes' button below the form. 

Company Details
To set up company details for your account visit the following link. 

Notices (Email)
Now you'll want to configure your email notice to have your borrower receive the information to register their portal account. To do this, navigate to the Admin tab, then click on 'Notices' on the left-hand list.
On the Notices page, click on the 'Template' button from the list of Welcome Letter notices of your preference (based on the Trigger type that suits your needs).
Once you're in the Template to make modifications, set up the welcome letter the way you'd like.
Use the drop-down list of Bryt data fields from the top-right corner so you can insert the [PORTAL_REGISTRATION_LINK] your custom notice document. (Image below)
It's recommended to include the [LOAN_NAME] and [BORROWER_EMAIL] data fields to make it easier for the borrower to register their account. 

Once that's done click the 'Save Changes' button below.
You can see a sample of the notice by clicking on the 'Test' button, which will be sent to the email set up with your account.
Then on the Welcome Letter Notice you just modified you'll want to click on the 'Edit' button to set the notice to active.
Under the 'Do you want to make this notice Active?' use the drop-down options and select 'Yes'. (If you leave only this option to yes and save changes you'll be able to manually choose recipients to send out the email notices to.)
If you'd like to automatically send out notices, under the 'Automatically Email borrower when notice is generated?' you'll use the drop-down options to select 'Yes'.
For our example, we'll leave it to the manual sending method using the welcome letter with the at loan creation trigger.

There are two ways to have the borrower receive their Borrower Portal registration link. 

Sending a Borrower a Portal Registration Link Directly via Email
To send the borrower their registration link manually, you'll want to go to their contact, click the Portal tab on the left-hand list, and click the 'Send Invite to ...' link to send the borrower their registration link via email.
To get a visual walkthrough of this process via Contacts, follow this link.
Note: The borrower portal registration process only works per unique email, if you have several contacts as 'John Doe' but each is separate due to a different organization, each requires its unique email. If you expect one email to have access across different contacts and loans, that's not the case. The system sees each contact record as a separate entity despite them being the same person in real life and it's true because they've been segmented to begin with because they're different (different EIN/ITIN/SSN). For example, John Doe would need three emails if they have three organizations they're borrowing under, each portal being separate. For this reason, a unique email is essential for the borrower portal registration process to work. Otherwise, the second borrower registration attempt will see that their email has already been used, due to whichever entity they first registered under. 

Borrower's Portal Account Creation Process via Notices (Email)

Now we'll cover the borrower's portal account creation process through their perspective (view). 

With the 'at loan creation trigger' welcome letter notice, you will see a record for the unsent notice type in your Bryt Dashboard.
You'll then want to click on the 'View' button.
On the next screen, you'll want to verify the details of the notice type and the associated loan to the contact.
This is where the notice with the Borrower Portal information will be sent to.
Once you're ready, click on the 'Send' button.

The borrower will then receive the following email based on the welcome letter format that you customized previously.
After the borrower clicks the link, they will be prompted with the following screen where they will need to enter their details to gain access to their account.

Per the image above, follow through the account registration process by going to your email and clicking the link in that email to set up a password.
After you set up a password you'll find the page that prompts you with another link to login to the account you just created.

After clicking the link above, your borrower will now have their account registered and ready for login.
The borrower will now be at the following screen with various options available to them (If enabled from the earlier step from the Borrower Portal Settings). 

Account Settings
Personal Information (This will be changed soon to include the ability for the borrower to edit their information and update it for the lender in their Bryt account.)
Make a Payment (Visit the ACH Module guide for details regarding payments and getting that set up for your borrowers.)

Payment History

Additional - Errors and Warnings

- If you have Recurring Payments enabled your borrower will not be allowed to submit a payment to you via the Portal.

- If you have not assigned an investor/lender (Investment module users only), your borrower will also be unable to submit a payment to you.

That concludes the Borrower Portal guide. 

Please contact Bryt Support if you encounter any errors or inconsistencies. 

Admin - Notices
To begin, you'll want to go to your Admin - Notices tab to configure the notice your borrowers will receive informing them of the availability of this 1098 form.
At the very end of the list of notices, you'll see a new '1098 Available' notice.

Test - At this time, the 'Test' button yields an error (doesn't work) - if you happen to access this guide and this button is not visible, then we've updated it since it'll be non-functional anyway.
Edit - This option will allow you to rename the notice's Subject and Description. You'll need to select 'Yes' when being asked if you'd like to set this notice to 'Active'. The Manual system trigger will be a link you click under Batching, which we'll cover in the next sections.
Template - If you need a refresher on editing these templates, please reference this guide. For this '1098 Available' notice, you'll likely want to include a portal login link variable or a portal registration link with the loan name and email you have in the system. That is, in the event the primary borrower hasn't registered a portal (only primary borrowers are assigned a 1098 form at this time, as current system functionality only works off of the primary borrower - if you'd like to reference another person, you'd want to edit the form manually outside of Bryt). 

Admin - Portal Setup
Now that the notice is set up, you'll want to go to Admin - Portal Setup to enable the 1098 module so your borrowers have access to this new button. 

Click the 'Edit' button for the 'Documents - 1098s' module.

From there, you'll want to click the checkbox to enable the module, then click 'Save'. 

Reports - Batching
Now that the module has been enabled for your borrowers to access via the borrower portal, we can proceed with batch-generating the 1098 forms and using the notice's manual trigger.
1) You'll want to go to Reports - Batching and Batch Generate 1098s first. Please refer to the Batching guide to learn and/or reference how the Batch Generation process works for 1098 forms (the User Interface should explain - updating borrower/contact information or company information). If your borrowers don't have a Tax ID, then you may enter nine zeros as a workaround to get the batch generation to work, you would want to let the borrower know that they (or yourself) will want to edit their Tax ID for that 1098 form manually outside of Bryt.
2) Once you've batch-generated the 1098 forms successfully, you can use the '-Email notices of 1098 availability' link, which is the manual trigger for the '1098 available' notice. 

When clicking the link to trigger the notice, you'll first be prompted with information stating:
- the number of notices to be sent
- the most recent 1098 available will be sent (if many were generated previously for testing)
- the delay in the receipt/sending of these notices, which helps balance the load the system undergoes when triggering this notice during the day

Once you're ready to trigger the sending of these notices, click 'Send'. 

Note: To check this notice was sent, we suggest waiting 30-60 minutes, then going to a primary borrower's loan and checking the Email and Documents tabs - you'll see it listed there as a generated notice. You can also resend the notice via the Documents tab in the event the primary borrower's email was incorrect, update it under their contact, and then use the 'Send' button via the Contacts tab.

Borrower's Perspective
From the borrower's perspective, they'll see a new 'Documents' option (or whatever you named it under the Portal module's Display Name settings): 

When clicking that new 'Documents' option, they'll see a list of their associated loans separated by tax year (if they have more than one loan in service with you).
They would click the loan name you have in the system for them to download a 1098 form (which becomes available on their PC locally as a PDF file). 

That's all for this guide update. If you encounter any issues, please submit screenshots and information to support@brytsoftware.com, thanks.