The New Suitability Letters are now stored under ‘Documents’ on the left-hand side menu bar.
If you enter from a mortgage case you will see both Residential and BTL letters, whereas if you enter via a protection case you will see the Single policy and Multi policy letters.
There are ‘Network’ templates which are provided by Sesame in here. These are set as standard and if Sesame make any updates, it will auto update for you. However, your system administrator may have chosen to create a copy of these templates with firm branding, creating ‘Broker’ templates which you can use.
You have another tab called Drafts where you can save a letter in progress and continue the letter at a later stage. Previously you could only save one draft, whereas now you could have more than one draft saved at the same time, so please look at the date stamps to check which draft is your most recent one.
Click on Use template to load the letter after which a pop up will appear to clarify which case you are in and therefore going to create a document for.
Click Create Draft Document to continue.
At this stage we are also automatically saving a draft of the document but as you are working through the letter, ensure that you are saving to update the draft and not lose any work.
In the bottom right corner, you have a zoom functionality to zoom in and out of the letter as well as an expansion icon in top right corner which will collapse the top menu bar to increase the overall size of the letter. Alternatively, you can also zoom in and out on your browser by clicking F11 (On windows) to adjust the sizing so that you are able to fit the letter to your screen size.
The editor has more of a word-style menu bar now. At the top you can make visual amendments such as font, size and colour. We have added a spell check functionality to assist when writing your letters. Also, we have replaced the ‘token’ style boxes which requires a lot of clicking to an editable letter and an automatic date function which will always put in today's date.
Click into the letter/tables, to start typing information.
If you prefer to copy and paste text into the letter from an external letter. Please use keyboard shortcuts CTRL+ C and CTRL+V. You can use the top menu bar to amend the font and sizing. To highlight all text in the document, click CTRL + A and make font/font size changes entirely.
Any text that is highlighted in red is optional content which is editable. Click on it to make any edits to the wording/add information and to include sentence/s in the letter click on anywhere on the sentence so that it turns blue. At the end any sections/sentences in red will not be in the final letter.
Within the Mortgage letter, the system will automatically pre-populate the customer personal details and the new mortgage information. You can then edit the text to provide details around why you have recommended the mortgage etc. Turning the red sentence blue by clicking on it.
You have a save button to save drafts of the letter which we recommend doing to avoid losing any progress that you have done.
Once you’re happy with the letter you must click Preview first. This will present the letter to you exactly how the customer would see it, and from here you can select ‘Continue Editing’ to go back to the editor and make more changes or select ‘Finalise’ to confirm the letter and save it in the document store.
Protection Report
For the Protection letter, we’ve made a massive effort to improve this journey to support pre population of Single and Multi-policies. You will be able to see the protection templates when you enter the ‘Documents’ tab via a protection case.
If the single policy template is chosen, the letter will be generated for the current case that you are in.
Whereas if a multi policy letter is selected, as well as pulling information from the current case you are in, we will also present a pop-up menu which shows all other cases which the applicant/s may have.
You will be able to see both single and joint policy's, case ID, case status, Benefit type and provider. You can then click to select any other policies you want to include in the suitability letter and select ‘Click draft letter’. Once generated, the policies will be prepopulated as tables in the letter, which you can click into to make edits if required.
You have a save button to save drafts of the letter which we recommend doing to avoid losing any progress that you have done.
Once you’re happy with the letter you must click Preview first. This will present the letter to you exactly how the customer would see it.
From here you can select ‘Continue Editing’ to go back to the editor and make more changes or select ‘Finalise’ to confirm the letter and save it in the document store.
Suitability letters will now be saved as PDFs rather than word documents. If you would like to make an update to a letter, you can either upload an addendum or prior to clicking preview and then finalising the letter, we would recommend clicking save so that you have an up to date draft available of the letter, which you can re-enter and make improvements to if needed.
We will be looking at improving this functionality to allow for editing within Smartr after the letter has been created.
How to add a logo, header or footer to the letter from within the case (user level)
Your system administrator can add a logo, headers or footers to the letter in the settings which will then apply to letters on all cases via Settings> Document Templates and following the steps below. They can find further guidance on this within the XXX guide.
Alternatively, you can also amend this on the letter on a case-by-case basis.
To add a logo, start by clicking into the document to create a space for where you want the logo to be, then on the menu bar click ‘INSERT’ and then select ‘Image’> Image> Upload Image and choose any image from your computer and open.
To add a header or a footer, select INSERT on the menu and then choose Header/ Footer. Click on this again if you’d like to remove the header or footer.