Workflows

Application Screening

the review of a rental applicant's identity, income, credit, and rental history to decide whether to approve the lease

The job in one minute

What it produces

A complete file, a decision under your written criteria with the criteria version recorded, and a same-day notice when a consumer report drives a denial or condition.

Who owns it

The property manager decides every denial and conditional approval. The leasing agent takes the application and chases signatures. The compliance manager writes the criteria and owns the notice template and fee table.

How often

Daily. The Atlas lists fourteen processes in this file, planned at 8 to 30 hours a day each for 10 to 60 applications. Hours are planning estimates.

Why it hurts

Fourteen processes, one file. Two of three adults have signed. Pay stubs are phone photos. The screening portal shows a recommendation in one window while the written criteria sit in a PDF in another. Then a denial goes out as a text with no reporting agency named.

Each shortcut is a liability under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and fee caps, reusable report rules and fair chance laws vary by state and city.

Systems it touches

The agent compares the fee and criteria on your listings with the current criteria version and flags a mismatch.

  • Yardi Voyager
  • RealPage
  • MRI
  • AppFolio
  • Entrata
  • Buildium
  • Screening services
  • E-signature
  • ILS listing sites
  • SMS
  • Outlook
  • Excel
  • SharePoint

12 steps · 6 actions · 5 decisions · 1 human reviews

The workflow, step by step

Action Decision Human review Select a step in the flowchart to jump to it.

  1. Action · Agent

    Pull new applications and record received times for first-come order.

  2. Decision · Agent

    Completeness. Every adult signed the report authorization, documents are in, the fee fits the state limit.

  3. Action · Agent

    Request missing items through the platform; the file waits in a visible status.

  4. Action · Agent

    Read the ID and compare name and date of birth with the application.

  5. Action · Bank

    Read pay stubs, offer letters and bank statements into fields with page references.

  6. Decision · Agent

    Compute income and the income-to-rent ratio per your criteria.

  7. Action · Agent

    Order the screening report and save it to the file.

  8. Decision · Agent

    Where a fair chance law applies, criminal history stays unread until a conditional offer issues.

    Unlocks once the step before it is done.

  9. Decision · Agent

    Apply the written criteria; assistance animal requests go to the accommodation process, never priced as pets.

  10. Decision · Agent

    Outcome: approve, conditional or deny.

  11. Human review · Every conditional

    Every conditional, every denial and every criminal history result goes to the manager.

  12. Action · Agent

    Generate and send the adverse action notice through the platform, and save the PDF with its date.

✓ Done

Rules vs judgment

A screening score can be one input to a criteria row you wrote. It is never the decision.

  1. Exact rule

    • Completeness checklist per adult
    • Fee limits and refund clocks
    • Income math and ratio thresholds
    • Look-back periods and notice contents
  2. The model reads

    • Phone photos of pay stubs
    • ID images against the application
    • Bank statements with irregular deposits
    • Signs a document was edited (flagged only)
  3. A person decides

    • Every denial and condition
    • Every criminal history result
    • Every accommodation request
    • Files with a suspected altered document

When it stops

What you end up with

A file that shows the received time, every document with its extracted values, the criteria version, the income math, the report, the reviewer's decision with a reason code, and the notice as sent. Applicant data stays on your machine and in your systems.

More on where data goes and how review steps work is on the Product page.

Questions

How fast must the adverse action notice go out?

There is no grace period. The notice is generated when the reviewer records the decision and sent in the same step.

What happens when an applicant disputes the report?

The dispute goes to the reporting agency. The agent logs it, holds the unit per policy, and re-runs the criteria when a corrected report arrives.

Does the agent handle guarantors?

Yes, as a separate applicant with its own authorization, report and income test. A co-signer requirement based on the report still triggers a notice to the primary applicant.

No prompts. No babysitting. No Integrations.

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