The document intake process is your first operational touchpoint with borrowers-and it sets the tone for everything that follows. Get it right, and documents flow in smoothly, processing accelerates, and borrowers feel confident and well-supported. Get it wrong, and you're chasing documents for weeks, frustrating borrowers, and delaying closings.
Yet most mortgage brokers treat document intake as an afterthought, relying on email requests and manual follow-ups. Here's how to build a document intake process that actually works.
The Problems with Traditional Document Intake
The typical document intake process looks like this: You send borrowers an email listing needed documents. They gather paperwork over the next few days or weeks. They email files back-sometimes complete, often incomplete. Your team manually sorts through attachments, organizing files and identifying what's still missing. Then you follow up via email or phone to request outstanding items. Rinse and repeat.
This approach creates predictable problems:
- Unclear expectations: Borrowers don't understand exactly what's needed or in what format
- Submission friction: Email attachments have size limits and feel insecure
- Organization chaos: Your team spends hours sorting email attachments
- Tracking difficulty: Nobody has clear visibility into what's been received and what's outstanding
- Follow-up burden: You manually track and chase missing documents
- Security exposure: Sensitive documents travel via unencrypted email
The result? Longer processing times, frustrated borrowers, and wasted staff time-all from a broken intake process.
Best Practice 1: Provide Clear Document Checklists
Borrowers want to help, but they often don't understand exactly what you need. "Recent paystubs" is ambiguous-does that mean one? Two? From what time period?
Create clear, specific checklists that borrowers can actually use:
- Be specific: "Two most recent paystubs dated within the last 30 days" instead of "recent paystubs"
- Explain why: "We need your T4 slips to verify your annual income" helps borrowers understand importance
- Provide examples: Show what acceptable documents look like
- Indicate priority: Mark which documents are most urgent
- Update dynamically: As documents are received, update the checklist to show progress
When borrowers know exactly what you need and can see what's been completed, submission rates improve dramatically.
Best Practice 2: Use Dedicated Upload Portals
Email was never designed for secure document exchange. Dedicated borrower portals eliminate the problems inherent in email-based intake:
- No size limits: Borrowers can upload large files without compression or splitting
- Mobile-friendly: Documents can be submitted from phones or tablets
- Secure by design: Encrypted uploads protect sensitive information
- Instant organization: Uploads are automatically associated with the correct loan
- Progress tracking: Borrowers see what they've submitted and what's still needed
- Automated confirmations: Borrowers receive instant confirmation when documents are received
Portal-based intake is professional, secure, and dramatically more efficient than email for both you and your borrowers.
Best Practice 3: Accept Documents Early and Often
Many brokers wait until after application to request documents. This creates unnecessary delay. Instead, start collecting documents as early as possible:
- Send intake links during initial conversations
- Accept documents before formal application
- Encourage borrowers to submit as they gather items (not wait until everything is complete)
- Review and verify documents as they arrive, not in one big batch
Early intake accelerates processing and helps identify potential issues before they become problems. Borrowers appreciate not having to gather everything at once, and your team can start verification work immediately.
Best Practice 4: Automate Organization and Routing
When documents arrive, someone needs to download them, rename them, file them in the right folders, and notify the right team members. In traditional workflows, this happens manually-consuming significant time and introducing errors.
Automate this process so that uploaded documents are:
- Automatically associated with the correct loan order
- Categorized by document type
- Named according to your conventions
- Instantly available to authorized team members
- Flagged for review based on workflow rules
Automation eliminates processing lag and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
Best Practice 5: Review and Verify Immediately
Don't let documents sit in a queue. Review submissions as they arrive to:
- Verify completeness: Does the document show all required information?
- Check quality: Is the file readable? Are pages missing or cut off?
- Confirm accuracy: Does the information match what was expected?
- Identify issues early: If something is wrong, you can request correction immediately
Immediate review prevents the frustration of discovering problems days or weeks later when you're trying to meet closing deadlines.
Best Practice 6: Communicate Status Proactively
Borrowers submit documents and then wonder: "Did they get it? Was it what they needed? What happens next?" Without proactive communication, this uncertainty creates anxiety and leads to follow-up calls that consume your time.
Implement automated status communications:
- Immediate confirmation: "We received your paystubs-thank you!"
- Review notifications: "Your documents have been reviewed and accepted" or "We need a clearer copy of page 2"
- Progress updates: "You've submitted 6 of 8 required documents-great progress!"
- Reminder nudges: "Just a friendly reminder: we're still waiting for your bank statements"
Proactive communication reduces borrower anxiety, decreases support burden, and accelerates document collection.
Best Practice 7: Make Follow-Ups Systematic, Not Heroic
In typical operations, following up on missing documents requires someone to manually track what's outstanding, remember to follow up, and send reminders. This relies on individual effort and memory-which inevitably leads to things falling through the cracks.
Make follow-ups systematic:
- Track outstanding documents automatically
- Generate reminder communications on schedule (e.g., 48 hours after initial request, then every 72 hours)
- Escalate urgency as closing dates approach
- Provide visibility so team members can see what's outstanding without manual checking
Systematic follow-ups ensure nothing is forgotten while reducing the burden on your team.
Best Practice 8: Optimize for Mobile
Many borrowers will submit documents from mobile devices-they're at work, at home in the evening, or traveling. If your intake process isn't mobile-optimized, you're creating unnecessary friction.
Ensure your document intake portal:
- Works smoothly on phones and tablets
- Allows direct upload from mobile device cameras
- Has clear, touch-friendly buttons and navigation
- Doesn't require excessive typing or form-filling
- Provides clear progress indicators on small screens
Mobile optimization isn't just convenient-it accelerates document collection by meeting borrowers where they are.
Best Practice 9: Maintain Security Throughout
Document intake involves highly sensitive information: tax returns, bank statements, employment details. Security must be built into your intake process, not added as an afterthought:
- Encrypted transmission: All uploads must use encrypted channels
- Secure storage: Documents must be encrypted at rest
- Access controls: Only authorized team members should access borrower documents
- Audit trails: Track who accesses documents and when
- Secure sharing: If you need to share documents with partners, use secure methods-not email
Security isn't just about compliance-it's about maintaining borrower trust. One data breach can destroy your reputation.
Best Practice 10: Measure and Optimize
You can't improve what you don't measure. Track key metrics to understand and optimize your intake process:
- Submission rates: What percentage of borrowers submit complete documents on first request?
- Time to completion: How long from initial request to all documents received?
- Resubmission frequency: How often do you need to request document corrections or replacements?
- Bottlenecks: Which document types take longest to collect?
- Support burden: How much time does your team spend on intake-related communication?
With clear metrics, you can identify problems and test improvements systematically.
The Technology Foundation
Notice that most of these best practices require infrastructure-dedicated portals, automation, tracking systems, and communication tools. This isn't something you can effectively build with email and spreadsheets.
Modern document intake requires purpose-built platforms that provide:
- Secure borrower-facing portals
- Clear document checklists with progress tracking
- Mobile-optimized interfaces
- Automated organization and routing
- Systematic follow-up reminders
- Status communication automation
- Security and encryption throughout
- Analytics and reporting
Investing in proper intake infrastructure pays immediate returns through faster document collection, reduced staff time, and better borrower experiences.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
As you implement these best practices, watch out for common mistakes:
Mistake 1: Requesting Everything at Once
Don't send borrowers a massive list of 20 documents and expect them to gather everything before submitting anything. This feels overwhelming and creates delay. Instead, prioritize: request critical documents first, then collect additional items as needed.
Mistake 2: Unclear Instructions
"Send me your bank statements" is unclear. How many months? All accounts or specific ones? Full statements or just certain pages? Clear, specific instructions prevent confusion and resubmissions.
Mistake 3: Manual Processes Disguised as Automation
Some operations think they've automated intake when they've actually just digitized manual processes. True automation means documents are organized, routed, and tracked without human intervention-not just uploaded to a folder that someone then processes manually.
Mistake 4: Ignoring Mobile Users
If your intake process doesn't work well on mobile, you're making it harder for a significant portion of borrowers. Don't assume everyone has access to desktop computers and scanners.
Mistake 5: Treating Intake as Separate from Workflow
Document intake shouldn't be a disconnected first step. It should integrate seamlessly with your overall workflow so documents flow directly to the next stage without manual handoffs.
Conclusion
Document intake is where loans either gain momentum or stall out. The best practices outlined here-clear communication, dedicated portals, automation, immediate review, and systematic follow-up-create an intake process that accelerates processing rather than creating bottlenecks.
The difference between operations with great intake processes and those with broken ones is dramatic. Great intake means documents arrive complete and organized, processing starts immediately, and borrowers feel confident and supported. Broken intake means endless chasing, frustrated borrowers, and staff buried in administrative work.
The choice is yours-but in today's competitive environment, broken intake is a luxury you can't afford.