SPARK 8.1.8.1 Release Notes

The SPARK 8.1.8.1 release is planned for Friday, June 13th. This update includes new document analysis automation activities and support for Lumos PRIME+ v2. The maintenance window will occur from 11:00 PM CT on Friday, June 13th through 9:00 AM CT on Saturday, June 14th.

What's New

Document Analysis Automation

SPARK now supports fully automated analysis of tax returns within automation workflows – helping accelerate pre-qualification and underwriting by eliminating manual processing steps.

Two new automation activities give you precise control over which returns are analyzed:

• Analyze Individual Tax Returns (1040)

• Analyze Business Tax Returns (1120, 1120S, 1065, and 1040 Schedule C)

Each activity is configurable to fit your workflow needs and includes the following options:

• Auto Spread Financials: Automatically extract and spread financials for each tax year. If left unchecked, the tax returns will still be analyzed, but a human must review and manually apply the results to the package.

• Include All Tax Returns or Most Recent Year: Choose whether to process all available years or just the latest.

• Minimum Confidence Threshold: Set your tolerance for when automation proceeds versus requiring human review.

• Overwrite Existing Spread: Decide whether to overwrite previously spread financials or leave them untouched.

Each activity also produces calculated values – such as Estimated DSCR, Revenue, and Net Income for business returns, and Total Income for personal returns – which can be used to guide subsequent steps in your workflow.

When qualifying tax returns are uploaded and meet your configured settings, SPARK will extract, analyze, and spread the data automatically. These automation activities can be integrated into your existing workflows to reduce manual effort and improve consistency across packages.

Lumos PRIME+ Updated to v2.2

SPARK’s Lumos integration now supports version 2.2, featuring:

• A new model trained on updated data

• A redesigned PRIME+ PDF report for improved clarity and insight

Note: As part of this update, SPARK no longer displays the feature values for the top 10 characteristics that impacted the score.

What's Changed

Credit Not Available Elsewhere Updates

For loans in SPARK using SOP 50 10 8, we’ve made the following updates to SBA Eligibility:

• Added a new option: "The credit score does not meet the lender’s conventional credit score policy", in alignment with recent E-Tran updates.

• The section will remain In Progress if only the new credit score option or “Any other factors…” is selected. To mark the section Complete, at least one additional eligible reason must be selected.

• Removed the option: "The lender’s policy normally does not allow loans to businesses in the Applicant’s industry."

E-Tran submission validations now require that at least one of the following is selected:

• The business requires a longer maturity

• The requested loan exceeds the lender’s policy limit

• The collateral does not meet the lender’s policy requirements

• The lender’s policy normally does not allow loans to new businesses

Credit Memo and Document Updates:

• The credit score policy reason is now included in both the Credit Memo and Credit Not Available Elsewhere document when selected.

• The industry policy reason has been removed from the Credit Not Available Elsewhere document for SOP 50 10 8 loans.

Withdrawing / Declining Companion Interim Loans

SPARK now supports withdrawing or declining a Companion Interim Loan when its associated parent loan is also being withdrawn or declined at the same time.

Referral Partner Company Management Improvements

SPARK now supports changing the company associated with a Referral Partner. This update improves data integrity, prevents cross-company conflicts, and ensures users are informed of the downstream impact.

• Change Referral Partner Company: Lenders can now edit the company associated with a Referral Partner directly from their profile. The current company is pre-filled, and only existing Referral Partner companies can be selected (creation of new companies is not allowed here).

• Dashboard Access Warning: If the Referral Partner being edited has Company Dashboard access, SPARK now displays a confirmation warning the user that dashboard access will shift from the current company to the new one. This helps prevent unintentional access changes.

• Team Member Impact Validation: Before saving, SPARK checks if:

  • The Referral Partner is listed as an Additional Team Member on any packages.

  • The Referral Partner is the Primary Referral Partner on a package that includes Additional Team Members.

  If either scenario applies, SPARK warns the user that Additional Team Members will be removed from these packages to avoid mismatched company affiliations.

These changes help maintain clean relationships between Referral Partners, companies, and packages – ensuring visibility and access stay properly aligned.

Document Analysis Confidence Score Visibility

When confidence issues arise during document analysis, you’ll now see a tooltip displaying the calculated confidence score directly on the resolve action.

Document Analysis Performance Improvements

Following increased usage in the 8.1.7 release, we’ve optimized the back-end processing of tax returns to improve concurrency and reliability.

Back-End Performance Improvements

We’ve made several performance enhancements to the processes that automatically generate documentation requirements, tasks, fees, and conditions and covenants.

Support for Disabling Package Summary Templates

SPARK Administrators can now disable specific Package Summary templates – including Credit Memos, Pre-Screen Memos, BDO Memos, and more – to ensure lenders use only the approved versions.

API Documentation

We have updated the default API documentation from V2 to V3.

What's Been Fixed

Unknown Documents and Electronic Signature Requests

We’ve improved how SPARK handles edge cases involving electronic signature requests:

• Documents deleted from SPARK after a signature request is sent are now properly handled.

• Documents added to the request from within DocuSign will also be supported.

These documents will now return to SPARK as unclassified documents, ensuring nothing is lost in the signature process.

Document Analysis and Negative Numbers in Income Statements

We deployed a hotfix to address an issue where negative numbers were not recognized properly in the Income Statements extracted from business tax returns.

Document Analysis and Including / Excluding Income Statements and Balance Sheets

SPARK will now properly handle excluding a specific income statement or balance sheet identified in a document analysis.

Non-Standard Time Zone Codes

We deployed a hotfix to resolve an issue where users in certain regions were not seeing package activity or direct messages in their local time zone. This was caused by non-standard time zone identifiers, which are now properly supported.

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, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or submit a ticket to the SPARK Support Team.