Once an application is submitted, it will update its status to Pending Screening. Now, it’s time to run screening on your applications.
In this article, you will learn how to:
- Use the Approval Center prior to Screening
- Initiate screening on an applicant
How to Use the Approval Center
To prepare an application for screening, locate the application that you want to run screening on. Click the expanding arrow icon to navigate to the household section of the application.
Review Approval Center
The Approval Center provides you an overview of all screening items that need to be viewed and verified. Click on the icons or View to review the screening item. A window will popup with a link to the item that needs to be reviewed.
Identity
If your team elects to manually verify government-issued IDs, your team will need to review the identity information presented. When using ID Verification, there can be times when discrepancies or issues are found. The most common issue that occurs is when the address on the ID does not match the address on their connected bank account. You can use the Doc Fraud Scanner to verify the validity of the ID.
Employment
Supporting documents (i.e. pay stubs, offer letters, tax records, and bank statements) will need to be manually reviewed by a member of the team. To verify the employment information, review the uploaded documents. For employment, the reviewer will be able to add a monthly pre-tax and monthly next income based on the provided bank stubs. After this has been added and reviewed by the team member, the verification results can be updated from Not Started to Verified. The same steps can be completed to verify a provided bank statement.
If an applicant will not be contributing to the rent, a red hand will be shown in the box with the note Applicant stated they will not contribute to income.
Income
Applicants will enter their monthly source(s) of income in this section of the application. Aptly will inform you if the income provided by the applicants meets your stipulated income-to-rent requirement for your rentals. If bank connect is enabled, this section will also display the applicant’s average monthly income; average monthly cashflow; current account balance; and average closing balance.
If an applicant will not be contributing to the rent, a red hand will be shown in this box with the note (Applicant) Stated that they will not be contributing to rent. The Income section of their application will note the reason for not contributing to rent: student, partially employed, unemployed, stay-at-home mom/ dad, caregiver, or other (the applicant will be able to comment on this last option).
Documents
You can find all submitted documents for an applicant at the bottom of their application. If document fraud scanning is automatically enabled, the documents will have an icon on the file to show the results. Hover over the icon to learn more. Click on the 3 dots to view the document scanning results.
Verifications
You can send an email to the tenant’s landlords and/or employers right from the application. A template will be sent to the landlord or employer with a form link to complete verification along with a consent form attached.
Verify Rental History: Applicants who rent can provide or be required to provide consent to contact their current or former landlord. This can be used to verify their previous rent payment amounts. Verify Employment: Applicants can provide or be required to provide consent to contact their current employer. This can be used to verify their stated pay and employment status.
How to Initiate Screening on an Applicant
Now that you have completed all pre-screening steps, all applications are complete, and the application is in the Pending Screening status, screening should be run on all adult applicants in the household.
To initiate screening, navigate to the application that you want to run screening on. Click the expanding arrow icon to navigate to the household section of the application.
In the Household view of the application, you can run screening on each applicant listed in the Applicants section. To run screening, click on any of the icons that show a blue exclamation mark.
A new screen will pop up displaying the screening options that can be run on the selected applicant. If your company does not run certain checks (such as criminal or eviction), those options will not appear in the list.
Toggle the screening options that you want to run on the applicant. Then, click the Request Screen button.
Post-Screening
Results will generally populate within a few hours for all reports. The icons for the screens in the Applicant list will show as green if the screening was run successfully. If a screen is unsuccessful, you’ll see a blue icon. However, if there is an issue with the screen that needs to be removed, a red icon will be shown.