- 04 Sep 2024
- 6 Minutes to read
- Print
- DarkLight
One-Stop Custom Documents Guide
- Updated on 04 Sep 2024
- 6 Minutes to read
- Print
- DarkLight
This guide is intended to walk through the Custom Documents Add-On Module within one article. This article helps address the commonly asked question of how to send a borrower an invoice (Payment Request) or create your own.
The YouTube series link below accompanies this article in a video/visual format.
Video Walkthrough Series Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYc836wUSn5-XcFVMbIXMhGRv7TIeCxs5
Here are links to full-detail articles:
How to Use Merge Field Variables Guide
Document Automation Guide
Custom Documents Guide
Custom document resources have now been combined into a single article, link below:
Custom Document Templates and Variables
On MacOS
Above is the example if your opened word document has enough space, if not, it'll appear like an icon below.
On Windows
To insert Merge Field Variables on Windows, navigate to the 'Insert' Tab, then look for the 'Quick Parts' button to find the 'Field' option.
Guide Start:
1) Decide whether you'll be using a Starter Document we've provided using the link above, or start on a fresh Word document (please make sure you're using the latest version of Microsoft Word).
- Since many people ask for invoicing, we'll start by downloading the Loan Summary (Invoice Breakdown)starter document. You'll want to click the blue text to download the document to your local computer. Once that's downloaded, you'll want to open it.
Note: Once opened, you'll see several parts with highlighted text. The highlighted text is part of the disclaimer that you'll want to ensure it's using the correct Merge Field Variable that you want to use. Once you've read the disclaimer at the top in highlighted red text, you can delete that. For the rest of the highlighted text, the merge field variables can be highlighted, or left as highlights for your testing purposes (to ensure data accuracy once generated on a loan). Some of you may not use Impound or Lender fees, so you'd want to delete those cell rows (to do that, you'll want to triple-click within the row to highlight all the text in the cell, then right-click to bring the options menu up and click on 'Delete Cells...' to bring up a prompt that'll give you more options for deletion, you'll want to select 'Delete Entire Row' and click 'Ok' to delete the entire row).
Note: We advise minimal formatting at the start since adding images or images/variables within tables can cause the generation process for a document to break and corrupt the document. The way through what's possible is to apply one formatting element at a time and see if the document will generate.
2) Once areas are deleted and formatted to your liking, you'll want to save the Word document and close it. You'll navigate to Bryt's Admin tab and click on 'Document Templates' on the left-hand list.
Once the local copy of the edited Word document is uploaded, you can also click the 'Update' button to re-upload a new version of the document if you've made changes, or if you've deleted your local copy you can click the 'Download' button to make changes and re-upload.
After clicking the 'Add Template' button a dialog box will appear, you'll want to click the 'Select files...' button to find the local copy of the document we've worked on. Once the document is selected and you click Ok/Select on your local file search, it'll automatically upload and you'll want to click 'Done' to exit the dialog box. You'll then see your document appear in the list of available Document Templates.
3) From here, there are two things you can do to test a custom document.
Option One, you can use the Test button and select a loan and the document date to generate data for (Example: A payoff document that'll include interest dues up to that date and not today's date). This will generate the document and download the document to your local computer.
Then click 'Done' once you've tested the custom document on your desired loan(s).
The below image is an example of what we will see.
We can see that the Date is 4/12/2023 but it's pulling the next dues as 11/1/2022, this is because if you go to the loan's schedule, that's the last 'Open' pay period. It hasn't been reconciled. To get a different result, recording one payment would then return 12/1/2022 as an example. Another thing to note, the Payments - YTD section will only be pulling paid amounts within the current year. It will not sum paid values for the life of the loan. There are merge field variables for that if that's what you'd like to show - in this case, Interest over the life of the loan would be TotalInterestOLOL.
Option Two, you can navigate to the loan itself on the Loans tab, select a loan from the loan list, and then click on the 'Documents' tab on the left-hand list. Once there, you'll see buttons, among them is a 'Generate Document' button. You'll want to click that, make sure you select the correct document template, and enter a date for which you'll want data to reflect. For example, a future payoff document may have per diems that would be best addressed by using a future date, or a historic date if that's what you require. In our example below, we've gone with 4/12/2023.
From there you'll want to verify the data output (Result), you can also change the Result manually by clicking within the field and typing whatever you'd like. Once that all looks good to you, you can click 'Accept' at the bottom. After that you'll be shown a default file name for this document and if you'd like to change the file name you can do so before clicking 'Accept' again. We'll be going with the default.
Once that's done you'll see it in the list of Documents for the loan. There will be buttons on the far-right Options column to: delete the document, Download a Word Document of the file, Download a PDF, or a Send button to send it to the loan's primary borrower email address (provided they have one entered).
4) From here, depending on the adding merge field variables, the accuracy of the data, and the formatting you'd like, you'll want to reference the detailed guide on How to Use Merge Field Variables. Depending on your needs, there will be a lot of back and forth between editing and reuploading to verify formatting and data accuracy. While reviewing the guide on using the Merge Field Variables, you'll want to reference our list of available Variables. If there is a variable that isn't listed, please submit a request to support@brytsoftware.com to add that as a merge field variable request.
5) Optional: Document Automation - After your document is looking good and ready, you'll want to consider following our detailed guide on document Automation so that the document is generated based on system triggers/events and auto-emailed to the borrower (if you'd like that).
6) Optional: Lender-based documents (Investments module only) - As an investments module user, you'll have the ability to create lender-based documents with lender variables. The same logic applies to creating a custom document by inserting variables and tables as you see fit, but you'll want to check the different process via this guide. Basically, the generation for this type of document happens from the contact's Documents tab rather than a Loan's Documents tab. Plus, you'll want to use the 'Edit' button to switch the 'Template Source/Target' from 'Per Loan' to 'Per Lender'.
7) Optional: Update - New 'Per Borrower' Target: There is now a new 'Target' like 'Per Lender' that is available to all users called 'Per Borrower'. At this time, it does not do anything, but we plan on working on adding to this feature. If you'd like more information on the 'Per Borrower' target, please submit an email to support@brytsoftware.com
That's all. If you're ever stuck, please reference the start of this article to be linked to the full detailed guides for each component of this process. Or if there's something unclear within any articles/guides, please let us know so we can revise that. We'd greatly appreciate it.