How to use Sterlo, step by step

1Get set up

About 15 minutes, once.

1. Create your company account. Go to /register, enter your company name, email and a password (or use Google). You become the company's admin.
2. Fill in your company details. In the console open Settings → Company & team. Add your legal company name and an alert email — new applications and alerts go there.
3. Invite your team. Same page, Team & logins: add each person with a role.

   Role	Can
   Admin	Everything, including Settings, users and billing
   Underwriter	Work deals: upload, underwrite, offer, close, message merchants
   Viewer	Read only

4. Pick a plan. Billing in the left menu. Every plan has every feature and unlimited users; you pay by deals underwritten. A deal counts once, the first time its statements are analyzed.

2Get deals in

Turn on any or all of these. Every deal lands in your Pipeline, and its files are sorted automatically — application, statements, ID, voided check, P&L, tax return each in their own tab.

A. Forward your submissions inbox (recommended)

1. Open Settings → Inbox & messaging. Copy your private forwarding address.
2. In Gmail / Google Workspace or Outlook, set your submissions mailbox to forward to that address. Gmail shows a confirmation code — it appears right there in Settings; paste it back into Gmail.
3. That's it. Each broker submission becomes a deal: statements read, application read into the deal, positions found, scored.

B. Your application link and chat

1. Settings → Company & team shows Your application link and a Chat application link. Put them on your website, in emails, or send them to merchants.
2. Merchants apply in a few taps (or by chat), upload statements or connect their bank with Plaid. You get an alert email; nothing is sent to them beyond an on-screen confirmation.

C. ISO portal

Give each broker a private portal — see section 9.

D. Add a deal by hand

1. Click + New deal (top right), enter the business name, industry and requested amount.
2. Open the deal and click Upload statements (PDF or CSV, up to 12 at once). Overlapping months are de-duplicated, so re-uploading is safe.

3Set your rules

Your credit box, in Settings → Underwriting rules. Changes apply to new scoring runs; existing results stay as calculated until you re-score (section 11).

1. Scorecard weights. Six factors — revenue stability, durability, momentum, concentration, cash-flow sufficiency and balance strength — must total 100%. Click Save scorecard settings.
2. Grade cutoffs. The minimum composite score for A, B, C and D. Below D is F (decline).
3. Offer economics. For each grade: revenue multiple (how big an advance), factor rate and the term options. Also the maximum total debt service (all positions, as a % of revenue), the cap versus the requested amount, the minimum advance and the minimum months of history. Term loans has its own grid: revenue multiple, APR and terms per grade, plus minimum DSCR (default 1.25×) and origination fee.
4. Knockout rules. Hard gates checked before pricing — restricted industries and states, minimum time in business, revenue floors, NSF and negative-day limits and so on.
5. ISO commission clawback. The clawback period (default 90 days) and whether it's full or pro rata.
6. Credit policy. Upload your written rulebook so it travels with your settings.
7. Check the rules against history. Policy backtest re-runs your knockouts on deals you've already funded or declined and flags any rule that would have turned down a deal you funded.

4Underwrite a deal

1. Open it. Click a row in Pipeline. The header shows the grade, average monthly revenue, existing positions, the offer and the amount requested; the chips below the name (ISO, State, Contact) are clickable to edit.
2. Run underwriting. Click Run underwriting. One click does revenue analysis, position detection, knockouts, the scorecard, questions for the merchant and a draft offer. Deals that came in by email or the portal are usually already done.
3. Read the application into the deal. If an application was uploaded, More → Read application into the deal fills in owner, EIN, start date, address and the rest (blank fields only).
4. Review each tab:

   Tab	What to look at
   Overview	Composite score and factor breakdown, application score, statement integrity (tamper checks), business verification, the AI risk read and duplicate / same-merchant alerts.
   Bank analysis	Revenue: true monthly revenue with transfers and funding stripped out, deposit sources and the 3-way revenue check (bank vs. P&L vs. tax return). Positions & stacking: every funder found, what position you'd be in, the MCA risk metrics and a consolidation/buyout option. Transactions: every line, re-taggable.
   Offer & close	The draft offer, the simulator, the state disclosure and the contract.
   Documents	Everything on file, sorted by type. Upload more with Auto-detect type and it files itself.
   Servicing	Payments, syndication, monitoring and funding (after the deal funds).
   Activity	Merchant outreach, ISO progress, the workflow log, stips checklist, CRM sync and the RFI questions.

5. Need a report? More → Cashflow analysis PDF gives a shareable underwriting PDF.

5Work the queue

1. In Pipeline, switch between Open · Mine · Unassigned · Snoozed · Archived and filter by stage.
2. On a deal, use the owner dropdown to assign it to yourself or a teammate.
3. More → Snooze hides a deal for 1, 3 or 7 days (waiting on documents, say); it comes back on its own. Archive takes dead deals out of the way.

6Make an offer

1. Open Offer & close. The draft is built from your grid and capped by total debt service.
2. MCA or term loan. Click Price as term loan to turn the draft into an amortizing loan: APR, monthly payment, total repayment, interest and cash-flow DSCR for each term. Price as MCA switches back. Set the default product, APRs per grade, minimum DSCR and origination fee in Settings → Underwriting rules → Term loans.
3. Use the offer simulator to try a different advance, factor, term or payment frequency; it shows the payment, the merchant's holdback and the estimated APR. Save it as the offer if you like it.
4. Stacked merchant? The consolidation / buyout card (Bank analysis → Positions) prices an offer that pays off existing positions with one payment.
5. Approve the offer, then mark it sent when you've sent it. Nothing is ever emailed to a broker or merchant automatically.

7Close & fund

1. Set the business state (the State chip in the header) — it decides which disclosure law applies.
2. State disclosure. In Offer & close, the disclosure card says whether one is required (CA, NY, UT, VA, FL, GA, CT, KS, MO, TX, LA). Click Generate disclosure PDF. It's filed under Documents → Disclosures. Merchant signed one on paper? Upload signed disclosure.
3. Use your own form (optional). Settings → Disclosures & contracts → Upload forms: upload your counsel-approved PDF per state. Fillable PDFs are filled with the deal's numbers automatically and locked; flat PDFs are used as-is with the terms page attached.
4. Contract. Add your agreement once in Settings → Disclosures & contracts → Contracts (paste text or upload a PDF). On the deal, create the contract from the approved offer; you get a private signing link to send. The merchant signs online; the signed PDF and a signature certificate are filed on the deal.
5. Stips. Tick off the checklist in Activity (driver's license, voided check, proof of ownership, bank verification). Uploads tick most of them for you.
6. Bank login / verification. When the funding call or bank login is done, mark it on the ISO progress card in Activity so the broker sees it.
7. Fund it. In Servicing, enter the funded amount and date and click Mark funded. This starts payment tracking, monitoring, commissions and the clawback window.

8Message merchants

Drafted for you; a person always presses Send.

1. Make sure the deal has the merchant's email and/or mobile (the Contact chip).
2. In Activity → Merchant outreach, pick a purpose — Missing documents, Underwriting questions, Renewal or Payment check-in — and Email or SMS, then Draft message.
3. The draft lists exactly what's missing and includes the deal's private upload link. Edit anything, then Send and confirm.
4. Whatever the merchant uploads through the link lands on the deal, sorted. SMS replies appear in the same thread.

9ISOs & brokers

1. Add a partner. Settings → ISOs & investors → ISO partners: name, email, commission points, clawback days and how much they see (status only, or status plus a pre-score).
2. Send them their portal. Click Copy portal link. On the portal they submit deals (timestamped and attributed to them), upload their own agreement, voided check and ID once, and track every deal live.
3. Review their documents from the ISO partners table → approve or reject (they see your note).
4. Keep them updated. Their portal tracker fills in by itself — Submitted, In underwriting, Offer out, Contracts out, Contract signed, Bank login / verification done, Funded. Post a short update from the deal's ISO progress card; it shows on their portal within 30 seconds.
5. Let them syndicate (optional). Tick Can syndicate and set a maximum % for that ISO. Once an offer is approved they can request a participation; you Approve or Decline it on the ISO progress card. Approved ISOs get an investor statement link.
6. Commissions & clawbacks. Commission shows on their funded deals. If a merchant defaults inside the clawback period, a clawback opens; request it, then mark it recovered or waived.
7. Rank your brokers. Portfolio → ISO scorecard scores each ISO on fund rate, loss rate and file quality.

10After funding

1. Import payments. Portfolio → Payment health → Import ACH file: upload a NACHA return file or your processor's CSV (USIO, Actum, ACH Works…). Payments match to deals by reference or business name; returns flip the original payment and duplicates are skipped. You can also record a payment by hand in the deal's Servicing tab.
2. Watch payment health. Each funded deal is current, late, returning or stopped. Hard returns (R01, R08, R10…) raise an alert.
3. Syndicate. Add investors in Settings → ISOs & investors → Syndicators, then add participations on the deal (Servicing → Payments & syndication). Each investor gets a private statement link showing their share, collections, fees and balance.
4. Monitoring & renewals. Re-score funded deals with fresh statements or a live Plaid feed: grade drops and new positions raise alerts, and the renewal list shows who's eligible.
5. Collections. If a deal goes bad, send it to collections (OddRecovery) from the deal; recoveries flow back into the payment ledger.
6. Record the outcome. In Activity → Resolution, mark the deal paid, defaulted or renewed. Outcomes train your risk models and drive vintage analytics and clawbacks.

11Portfolio tools

1. Overview. Submissions, decline rate, live exposure, grade mix, industry exposure, the renewal pipeline and payment health in one place.
2. Re-score the book. Click Preview on current policy — every live deal shows old grade → new grade and a suggested action (watch, review now, renewal candidate, re-price). Click Apply to save the new grades; offers, contracts and statuses never change.
3. Loan tape. Pick Excel or CSV and click Export — one row per funded deal with terms, collections, balance, grades and outcome. Tick anonymize to hide merchant and ISO names before an NDA.
4. Vintage & performance. Collection curves by funding month and loss rates by grade, ISO, industry and source — and whether pricing is covering losses.

12Co-pilot

1. Click ✦ Co-pilot. If a deal is open it knows which one you mean.
2. Ask in plain English, for example:
   • “Summarize this deal” · “Why did this score change?”
   • “What are the biggest risks here?” · “Draft an RFI for what's missing”
   • “Which funded deals are falling behind?” · “Re-score the book on the current policy” · “Compare my ISOs”
3. It looks things up in your own data and cites the numbers. Anything that changes data (adding a note, running underwriting) appears as a proposal — click Approve or Dismiss.

13Integrations

14Questions

Does it ever contact merchants or brokers on its own?

No. It drafts offers and messages; a person on your team approves and sends every one.

A file landed in the wrong tab.

Open Documents and change its type — the note under each auto-sorted file says why it was put there. Scans with no text are treated as statements.

A statement didn't parse.

Digital PDFs and CSVs read directly; scans are read by AI when available. If a statement still fails, ask the merchant for the CSV export from online banking, or connect their bank with Plaid.

I changed my rules but the grades didn't change.

Rules apply to new runs. Use Portfolio → Re-score the book to apply them to every live deal at once, or click Run underwriting on one deal.

Who can see our deals?

Only users you invite. Each company's data is separated at the database level; ISOs and investors only see their own deals through their private links.

Need help?

Email joe@appfundingbeta.com.