Terms Glossary

Business Portal: The back-office portal that the organization uses.
Consumer Portal: The portal that consumers interact with. This is branded for the organization.
Landing Page: An applicant can enter your Approve Owl workflow by either being sent an invite link or by visiting your organization’s landing page. The landing page is a branded URL that presents a customized page of content with a “Get Approved” link. After linking the link, the applicant is taken to the Applicant Portal.
Invite link: These links are sent via SMS to the applicant and provide direct access to the applicant portal without an additional access code or password. The links expire after 24 hours. After the link expires, an applicant can request an verification code or the organization can re-invite the applicant.
Verification Code: A 6-digit number that verifies the applicant has authorized access to the primary phone number on file.
Applicant / Applicant Profile: The record of the applicant. Applicants are only active for up to 30 days from the last applicant sign in date. Afterwards the applicant becomes archived. Archived applicants are only available for viewing by the organization for 60 or 90 days after the archived date (depending on plan limits). Data in Approve Owl should be considered ephemeral. Long-term marketing data is best stored in a CRM and long-term decision data is best stored in a DMS or back office software. Approve Owl provides API access and PDF packets for data transfer.
Primary Phone Number: Applicants are identified in Approve Owl by their primary phone number. There can only be one applicant per primary phone number. Applicants can have more than one phone number on file, but only one primary phone number. The primary phone number can validate the ability to contact the applicant via an invite code or access code. The primary phone number cannot be edited or changed. If an applicant changes phone numbers, they should re-apply using their new number. We take security seriously and do not want to risk applicant data being accessible by an unauthorized person by transferring the profile to a new phone number or because a phone number was changed to an incorrect number.
Locations: The locations view of the Applicant profile is made up of geocoded transactional data. This provides you a clear picture of the applicant’s regional spending habits so you can quickly gauge the local stability of the applicant. Keep in mind, some transactions can have a different location due to the transaction being processed through a corporate headquarters address or third-party payment processor address.
Secure Document: An upload by the applicant. Secure Documents can be PDFs or any image format. Secure Documents are encrypted before storage and are only decrypted through Approve Owl organization permissions. Currently, Approve Owl is unable to provide previews of password-protected PDFs.
Document Packet: A PDF of all Secure Document the applicant as uploaded as well as the identity summary, financial summary and all generated bank statements.
Bank Link: Read-only access to an applicant’s financial institution. When granted access via a bank link, organizations can initially view account names and masked account numbers. Additional information from the applicant’s financial institution can be accessed by requesting an asset report. Approve Owl provides access to over 11,500 financial institutions in the United States. Bank links can be removed by the applicant through the applicant portal or invalidated by the financial institution on behalf of the applicant. No usernames or passwords are stored by Approve Owl to grant you access to the applicant’s financial information. When linking an applicant’s financial institution, the applicant must enter the correct credentials for access and in many cases answer a security question or provide an additional assurance of authorization.
Bank Link Event: Before a bank link is established, events leading up to a successful link are logged. These events are used in case the applicant says they had an issue linking their bank. Events logged include the institution the applicant searched for and the success or failure of logging in to a institution. Of the applicants that begin a bank link, the success rate of bank linking with Approve Owl is over 90%. The number one cause for issues is the applicant not entering their correct bank login and password.
Asset Report: A request to one or more of the applicant’s financial institution using valid bank links. An Asset Report provides organizations up to the minute transaction data at the time of request. Also, depending on availability from the financial institution, Approve Owl can provide additional identity information from the financial institution such as: names on bank accounts, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses the applicant has provided their financial institution.
Days of History: Approve Owl can provide up to 720 days of history, depending on your organization’s plan limits. The normal amount of history is 90 days. However, the actual days of financial history depend on the age of the applicant’s bank account and the amount of data provided by the financial institution.
Bank Account: Any kind of account available from a financial institution. Can be a depository account like checking or savings or any other type of account like a loan, credit card, or 401k, etc. Bank accounts can have transactions or not.
Available Balance: For depository accounts, it is the current balance plus/minus pending transactions. For other types of accounts, it depends on context and financial institution. For example, for credit cards available balance can be the spending limit minus charges.
Current Balance: For depository accounts, it is the balance after all posted transactions.
Transactions: Besides date, amount, description and posted status, Approve Owl provides extended details on bank account transactions such as geolocation data and transaction categorization.
Callouts: Approve Owl reviews an applicant’s transactional data across all financial institutions and bank accounts to callout topics that underwriters in the automotive space care about when reviewing an applicant. We currently callout the following topics automatically from transactions: Payroll, Tax Refunds, Courier Income, Unemployment Benefits, Cash App transfers in/out, Rent, Mortgage and Loan Payments, Hotel / Motel Lodging, total income and total expenses, immediate liquidity amount, largest deposits by description and most frequent expenses by category.
Financial Summary: A list of bank accounts and applicable callouts.
**Statements:**Approve Owl can generate uniform bank account statements as PDFs with up to 60 days of transactions. These statements are built using trusted data directly from the applicant’s financial institution and always include important details that can some times be missing from statements provided by the applicant such as pending transactions and end of day balances.
Reset Banking Utility: In some instances, you might want to reset the entire finances section of an applicant without deleting other aspects of the applicant’s profile such as secure documents or provided identity attributes. For example, if the applicant linked an unused bank account by accident and you agree to remove that data from consideration and allow the applicant to link a more current account.
Delete Applicant Utility: If an applicant wants to completely re-apply before their current profile is automatically archived, you are able to delete the applicant profile and re-invite the applicant.
Addresses: Approve Owl can automatically provide a possible address for an applicant based on data from an asset report or ask an applicant to provide current and previous addresses. When provided an address by an applicant, Approve Owl can verify the address against the asset report. The validity of an addresses is also checked against other data sources to provide you a clean and accurate address. When possible, we also check if it is a residential or commercial address and provide a street view of the address.
Emails: Approve Owl can automatically provide a possible email address for an applicant based on data from an asset report or ask an applicant to provide an email address. When provided one by an applicant, Approve Owl can verify the email address against the asset report.
Phone Numbers: Phone numbers are validated against data in an asset report when available. We also check each phone number against other data sources to provide caller id information such as owner name, phone type (mobile, land line, voip), and caller type (consumer or business).
Landing Page Editor: You have complete control over the visible content on the landing page as well as the branding color. Our landing page editor allows for WYSIWYG editing. We also support images with drag and drop uploading to the editor.
Usage: We track the number of asset reports pulled by your organization and provide daily and monthly totals. Your organizations plan has a soft cap of the total number of asset reports that can be pulled per month. Asset Reports usage doesn’t rollover to the next month.
Authentication Provider: Approve Owl offers two authorization providers. Email (default) in which the organization administrator invites users to use the system and is also responsible for revoking access. Users will login with an email address and a unique password. Microsoft Graph Auth which is preferred if your organization has Office 365 accounts or uses Azure Active Directory for account authorization. This centralizes management of users and groups to your existing infrastructure and provides your with more security and control. This also allows user to use their existing company login/password securely.
Team Members: These are users with direct access to the organization portal. Users can be invited to use the system using any email address. Users are not able to be invited ad-hoc if your organization is using Microsoft Graph Auth. We do not allow mixing of authorization types.
API Users: Users that have access Approve Owl resources through an API Key but are unable to login to the business portal.
API Key: API Users can have their keys manually generated and revoked. API Keys provide access to Approve Owl resources via a programmable interface.
Groups: A team member or API user can belong to one group. Groups provide access control to Approve Owl features and resources via permissions. We suggest having one “full access” group and adjust the permission of other groups based on their internal company function (such as Underwriter, BDC, Sales, etc). If your organization is using Microsoft Graph Auth, Approve Owl groups names should match the name of groups in your Active Directory instance to provide seamless onboarding and ease of administration.
Permissions: Access to features and resources provided by Approve Owl can be enabled or disabled for an entire group of users via permissions. We suggest that the permissions be set once per group and then use groups to change access. Changing access for an entire group of users can lead to confusion when access to features are revoked.
Following: As a business user, you can follow applicants that you are either helping or want to monitor the progress of. Following will opt you in to receiving in-app notifications when the applicant generates activity (such as signing in, uploads a document, edits their profile, etc). Following an applicant will also move them to your “My Applicants” list.
Analytics: Visitors: When someone visits your landing pages or consumer portal, they are given a unique id that lasts for 30 days regardless of the visitor signing in with a phone number. This tracks the original source of the visitor and collects page views.
Analytics: Sessions: A session belongs to a visitor. A session is 4-hour window of time in which page views and other events happen. A session can be closed in less than 4 hours if the visitor closes their browser window.
Analytics: Sources: These are the domains from which a visitor originated. Many visitors will be from apvowl.com as this is the domain that invites originate from. If your team is using Approve Owl for social engagement, you’ll seen many facebook.com subdomains show up as applicants come from facebook.com, the facebook mobile app, and facebook messenger.