SPARK 8.0.0 Release Notes and Webinar

The SPARK 8.0.0 release is planned for Saturday, March 30th. This update includes visual updates to the Individuals, Businesses, and Financial Analysis features. The maintenance window will occur from 9:00 PM CT on Saturday, March 30th through 10:00 AM CT on Sunday, March 31st.

Please join us for a release webinar on Thursday, March 28th at 11:00 AM CT, where you can see a demonstration and ask questions about the content of this release. You can view a recording of the webinar at this link.

What's Changed

Updates to Businesses

We have made some visual and functional updates to the Businesses feature.

• Users can now search the Businesses list to more easily navigate a longer list of businesses. 

• Businesses with a transaction role of Borrower or Guarantor are prioritized at the top of the list. All other businesses are listed below. 

• Businesses that have a business role of Operating Company have an ‘OC’ label in the Businesses list. 

• Selecting Ownership, Business History or Owner History for a Business now takes the user to a tab within the Edit Business page, versus a modal. 

• Ownership, Business History Statements, and Owner History Statements now support autosave. 

• When adding or editing a business, certain fields formerly in the general business information section are now contained within the Package Settings section. These fields are Transaction Role, Guarantee details if applicable, the selection of Primary Business, and Business Role. 

• The following activities in internal Information Requests have been updated to the new visual format: Business Ownership, Business Information, Business History Statement, and Entity Owner History Statement.

Updates to Individuals

We have made some visual and functional updates to the Individuals feature.

• Users can now search the Individuals list to more easily navigate a longer list of individuals. 

• Individuals with a transaction role of Borrower or Guarantor are prioritized at the top of the list. All other individuals are listed below. 

• Individual social security numbers and dates of birth are now visible on the Individuals list. SSNs are masked by default. 

• Selecting Associated Businesses or Personal History for an individual now takes the user to a tab within the Edit Individual page, versus a modal. 

• Associated Businesses and Personal History Statements now support autosave. 

• Users can assign a package primary contact from the Add or Edit Individual page. Previously, the primary contact could be assigned/reassigned only via the Individuals list. 

• When adding or editing an Individual, certain fields formerly in general individual information are now contained in the Package Settings section. These fields are Transaction Role, Guarantee details if applicable, and the selection of Primary Contact. 

• When choosing to import an existing individual, if the individual has a spouse, the spouse and their documentation will be included by default but can be switched off if the lender does not want to include the spouse on the package. 

• The following activities in internal Information Requests have been updated to the new visual format: Personal Information and Personal History Statement.

Updates to Financial Analysis

We have streamlined some of the navigation and actions within the Financial Analysis feature in SPARK. We did not make any functional updates to the Financial Analysis tables.

• Including/excluding Financial Analyses and reordering them within the credit memo is now in a side panel, similar to Guarantor Analysis. 

• Transaction role and Business role are shown on the list of Financial Analyses. 

• After creating a Financial Analysis, Settings and the option to delete can now be found while editing/viewing the Financial Analysis instead of on the list of Financial Analyses.

• If a statement within the Financial Analysis has been hidden from the credit memo, or the whole Financial Analysis has been hidden from the Credit Memo, a “Hidden from Credit Memo” label is shown by the statement name. 

• All Commentary fields in the Financial Analysis now support autosave.  

• NWR – when choosing periods to reconcile, Initial Net Worth will only be shown if the period to reconcile is N/A. 

• By selecting Add Period, a user can select a predefined period or create a new one. 

Updates to CAIVRS Analysis

• This page now supports autosave. 

• This page now has a search bar. 

• Lenders can show/hide Tax IDs on the page. They are hidden by default. 

• Lenders can expand/collapse all, similar to Documents. 

Updates to Lease Analysis

We have made some visual and functional updates to the Lease Analysis feature.

• The Analyst Comments box in Lease Analysis now supports Snippets. 

• When lease(s) are documented on a package, the summarized list of Leases includes Location Address, Lease Type, and Franchise Approved status if applicable. 

• Lease Agreement Document Placeholders are now shown at the bottom of the page, whether they are empty or contain a document. Users can also add a new Lease Agreement placeholder from this page. 

• Landlord/Lessor Address is no longer required.  

Updates to Industry Analysis

Industry Analysis has been updated to the new SPARK visual format and now supports autosave. 

Updates to Franchise Analysis

Franchise Analysis has been updated to the new SPARK visual format and now supports autosave. 

DocuSign ID Verification

We've added support for DocuSign ID Verification when sending DocuSign requests through SPARK; however, ID Verification must be enabled in your DocuSign account to use this new feature. If you're interested in learning more about DocuSign's ID Verification, please visit https://www.docusign.com/products/identify. Reach out to your Customer Success Manager if you are interested in turning this on in your SPARK instance.

Collateral Lien Position and Prior Liens

When documenting prior liens for Collateral, it is now possible to select a lien position up to the 10th position.

MeridianLink Credit Providers and SPARK Package Number

SPARK will now send the package number to your credit provider whenever an individual's credit is pulled. Most credit providers include this number in monthly invoices which should help with reconciling credit report expenses to packages in SPARK.

Reporting and Secondary Market "Sold To" Field

We've added the "Sold To" field to reporting so that customers can include this in SPARK reports or Excel-based reports that use the SPARK API reporting endpoint.

Date Credit Pulled in Individual API Endpoint

We've added the date of the most recent credit report to the Individual API endpoint.

Spouse Email Address and Information Requests

A new field is available for applicants to enter their spouse's email address in the spouse section of a personal information activity.

Option to View Notes When All are Archived or Resolved

The Notes feature that is available on most SPARK pages has been updated so that it is always visible when at least one note has been added to the page. The button will still be available even when all notes are resolved or archived. Prior to this change, the button was hidden once all notes were resolved or archived.

2023 Tax Forms and New Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings Sub Account

Minor updates have been made to SPARK's document analysis feature to support 2023 tax forms. As part of this change, a new sub account has been added that maps to the energy efficient commercial buildings deduction. If you would like to use this sub account in your income statement templates, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

Google Tag Manager Support for Lead Forms

Customers using SPARK lead forms and Google Tag Manager on their public-facing sites can now integrate Google Tag Manager with SPARK to track lead form usage in their instance of Google Analytics. Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager if you are interested in taking advantage of this feature.

New Fields for SPARK-generated PDF Forms

We've added several new fields that can be used in SPARK-generated documents:

• For Individuals: Gender, Gender Identity, Race, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Disability

• For Terms: Late Payment Penalty, Late Payment Days, Late Fee Penalty (%)

What's Been Fixed

• Guarantor Analysis Cash Flow Totals - A hotfix was deployed to resolve an issue with guarantor analysis cash flow totals not being automatically calculated after a sub account was changed.

• E-Tran and Limited Guarantors - A hotfix was deployed to resolve a validation issue when submitting limited guarantors to E-Tran.

• Use of Funds not associated with a product - A hotfix was deployed to resolve an issue with sources and uses on copied packages where the use of funds was not associated with the new product.

• DocuSign Audit History and Timezones - A hotfix was deployed to convert the DocuSign audit date to the current user's timezone.

• Referral Partner Portal and Document Listings - A hotfix was deployed to include all externally-facing document views. This was inadvertently removed in SPARK 7.9.9.

• SBA Form 1919 and EPC / OC Scenarios - A hotfix was deployed to resolve an issue with mapping EPC information when the EPC was not the primary business borrower.

• Reporting and Net Sales Price - A hotfix was deployed to resolve an issue with the precision of the net sales price value in reporting.

• Rounding of the Risk Rating Calculation - A hotfix was deployed to resolve an issue where the SPARK-calculated risk rating was not rounding properly.

• E-Tran Adjustment Periods for Variable Interest Rates - The SBA no longer supports Daily Adjustment periods so we've updated our mapping to send this adjustment period as "Other".

• Tracking Borrower Deposits as Equity - A hotfix was deployed to resolve an issue where users could not track a deposit as part of the applicant's equity injection.

• Browser Spell Check for Commentary - A hotfix was deployed to add back support for browser spell checks on the commentary fields that were updated in SPARK 7.9.9.

• Veteran Military Status not saving in Information Requests - A hotfix was deployed to resolve an issue where the selected military status for veterans was not saving properly.

• Referral Partner Portal and Information Requests - We updated the logic for our referral partner "to dos" to exclude information requests that have already been submitted to the lender since there isn't anything actionable for the referral partner.

• Project Address and E-Tran - SPARK will now send the project address defined for the package instead of the primary business address to E-Tran's project address field.

• Inactive Contacts and Task Creation - It was possible to select an inactive contact when creating a task. Inactive contacts have been removed from the new task form.

• E-Tran Project Agents and Origination - If a project agent was already sent to E-Tran and a lender attempted to do an update, an error would occur. This has been resolved to delete all agents and fees in E-Tran prior to sending the updated agents.

• Intermittent issue downloading documents to a Zip File - A hotfix was released to address an intermittent issue lenders were experiencing when downloading documents to a Zip File.

• DocuSign Certificate - The DocuSign certificate that SPARK captures now includes a PDF file extension to avoid problems opening the file when it is downloaded to your computer.

• SBA Form 1919 and Closing Costs - An issue was fixed where a $0 amount was being inserted into one of Form 1919's "Other" use of funds rows when closing costs were being covered by a separate (non-SBA) source of funds.

Find Out More

Stay tuned for the latest features and subscribe to your favorite categories. You can view our product roadmap at any time here.

If you have any feedback or questions about this release, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or email us at support@lendwithspark.com. Your feedback will help us make SPARK the best loan origination software in the market!