To get started, create a commercial-only division under your lender company so that you can more easily manage your commercial appraisal orders. Keeping residential and commercial appraisals separate can help you easily distinguish between your users that will be placing orders, your commercial appraisers, and the Administrator that will be sending out bid requests manually to your commercial appraisers. You can also setup the system to send out bid requests automatically. With Commercial specific settings you can customize your division to suit your organization’s needs.
Follow these steps to create a Commercial-only division under your lender company.
1. Under your Administrator account, go to the Relationships menu option at left, and click the Create Division button.
2. Fill out the required information for the Commercial division of your lender company here: Division Name, Address, etc.
3. When done, click Add Division. The new Division will then be listed. Click the arrow at the right to expand the details for this division and click the Edit Settings button.
4. When the Edit tab opens, click the Billing/Services header, then find the Commercial section.
5. Check the Commercial checkbox to enable this Division with the ability to place commercial appraisal orders.
6. In the Transaction section, select who should pay the transaction fee - either the division (originator) or the appraiser (usually the appraiser pays the transaction fee, because appraisers can make up the fee on the cost of their commercial service). The transaction fee will be shown in the Amount column.
7. Click the green Save button to keep your changes. This Division will then be able to place commercial appraisal orders.
Customize Commercial Settings
After you have enabled Commercial order types, your division will have a Commercial section where you can enable various Commercial specific settings. These settings can assist in streamlining your Commercial ordering process: from automating bid requests, to managed users accepting submitted bids.
2. By default, only administrator users can view and accept a bid. Enable the Allow Managed Users to Review Bids checkbox to allow supervisor and originator users to be able to view and accept appraiser bids as well. Appraiser name and contact information is still suppressed from managed users with this feature enabled. Additionally, you can permit your managed users to review your received bids, yet you can restrict said managed users from accepting the bid via the Restrict Bid Acceptance to Admins Only setting.
3. Much like residential orders, you can enable Conditional Acceptance for your commercial orders to allow the appraiser to conditionally accept by proposing an alternate due date/price. If you decline the conditions, you can assign the order to a different appraiser. This also applies to restricting any conditional acceptance to be approved or declined by an Administrator user.
4. The Require Borrower’s Email Address setting will display on the new order screen as a required field when this option is selected.
5. The Require Appraisal Fields from Appraiser setting will require appraisers to provide additional information when delivering their commercial appraisal report. Fields are displayed on the Property Information tab once a delivery has been made.
6. Automating your bid due by requests can be customized so at the time of placement your Set Bid By Date Out _ Business Days is automatically calculated and does not require you to manually input the date you need the bids submitted. As a note, weekends are excluded from the total number of days.
7. Uploading a Standard Bidding Terms letters for all your commercial orders will provide bidding details to all appraisers that have been sent bidding requests. When enabled, the bidding terms letter will automatically be distributed on all commercial orders at the time bids have been requested and can be overridden on a per order basis.
8. Uploading a Standard Engagement Letter for all your commercial orders can expedite the order creation process. When enabled, the engagement letter will automatically be made available on all commercial orders and can be overridden on a per order basis. You can always upload the engagement letter as needed per order at the time of order creation.