Appraisal Scope
January 24, 2024 Release Notes
This update contains new features, issue resolutions, and improvements to the Appraisal Scope platform and its integrations. Additionally, borrowers can now pay by eCheck/ACH making it possible for Appraisal Scope AMCs to reduce costs associated with transaction fees. Payment screens used by borrowers and clients were revamped, while client company payment configurations were simplified for staff users. Along with these enhancements, there were multiple integration updates and performance improvements deployed in this release.
USER EXPERIENCE
eCheck for Borrowers
Prior to this release, the option to pay by eCheck existed for client users only. This logic has been extended to allow borrowers to pay by eCheck to further reduce transaction fees that AMCs must pay when collecting the order fee. Just like client users paying by eCheck, the AMC must have ACH/eCheck configured within their Authorize.net instance and refunds must be managed via the Authorize.net application.
The Borrower Payment Configuration within a client company has a new eCheck option to go with Credit Card payments. If both options are checked, a borrower associated with the specific Client will have the choice to pay via eCheck or credit card. If only one option is checked, the borrower can only pay with that selected form of payment.
For staff users, we simplified the Payment section within the Client Company settings to better convey payment configuration options for both Client and Borrower payments.
We made enhancements to the Payment Screen by improving the UI for both client and staff users. The staff user layout was simplified and revamped, including verbiage changes to better communicate payment options for the given order/client configuration. Client and Borrower payment configurations are more clearly defined, and we renamed “Bank Account” to “eCheck” and “Bill me” to “Invoice”.
We revamped the payment screen for borrowers while adding the option to pay using eCheck. Borrowers paying by eCheck will be required to enter their bank account information, which includes validation of account and routing number requirements, when submitting payment via eCheck.
To better improve transparency to the user paying by eCheck, we refined the error message conveyed when the user inputs an invalid ABA Routing Number value.
INTEGRATION ENHANCEMENTS
CoreLogic CMS Integration
Orders from CMS integrated clients include an Engagement Letter that provides additional details about the service requested. Appraisal Scope automatically pulls the Engagement Letter at the time of the new order submission. In some cases, the Engagement Letter may not have been created causing the document to not display in Appraisal Scope. If the Engagement Letter is not present, Appraisal Scope will display a new button labeled, “Pull Engagement Letter”, within the Documents tab. Clicking this button will make a call to get the CMS Engagement Letter.
The LPA Key Number was mapped to the CMS integration. If an LPA Key Number is included with a new order from CMS, the value will pass through to Appraisal Scope.
Client API
We implemented functionality within the Client API that will check if the "Forward payment request to the borrower" platform setting is disabled. If disabled, the API response to the end client will display the message, "This payment option is not available."
CoreLogic Mercury Network Integration
The LPA Key Number was mapped to the Mercury Network integration. If an LPA Key Number is included with a new order from Mercury Network, the value will pass through to Appraisal Scope.
Admin API
We resolved an issue that prevented the getappraisalsreviewer API endpoint to return a list of orders in a Ready for Review or Revision Received status.
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
One of our goals is to constantly improve the reliability and performance of the platform. To support that goal, we continued our work to optimize the code that powers Appraisal Scope. Additionally, we improved the load time when viewing client company profiles.