Which report should I send?

Purchase comparison, refinance analysis, or single-loan breakdown — pick by the conversation you're having, not by the feature list.

The fee sheets are priced. Your borrower is waiting on an email. The only thing left is deciding which of the three reports to build — and the honest answer has nothing to do with the software. It depends on what your borrower is deciding right now.

Answer that, and the report picks itself.

The short version

The builder says it in fewer words. Click New report on a client's page and you get three cards: Purchase — "Compare 1, 2, or 3 loan options for a new home," Refinance — "Current loan vs. 1 or 2 proposed loans," and Single — "One loan, simplest output. Quick share."

"Which of these should I take?"

This is the comparison conversation, and it's what a purchase report is built for. Three columns maximum, one fee sheet behind each, lined up row by row so the difference between them is the only thing on screen: rate and APR, monthly payment, closing costs, credits, cash to close.

Reach for it when the borrower is weighing a trade — the lower rate against the points it costs, the smaller down payment against the mortgage insurance it brings, the fifteen-year term against the payment it demands. Those are choices a table settles faster than a phone call.

Two things worth knowing before you build one:

• You don't have to fill all three slots. A two-option comparison is usually the clearest thing you can send. Three columns of a decision the borrower has already half-made reads as homework.
• Give the columns names. The Fee Sheet label on each slot is what the borrower reads — "30-yr fixed, 1 point" says something "Loan 2" never will.

Only that client's purchase fee sheets appear in the pickers, so if a slot looks empty, the fee sheet you're after is probably marked as a refinance.

"Is refinancing worth it?"

A borrower who already has a mortgage isn't choosing between your options — they're choosing between your option and doing nothing. That's a different question, and it needs a refinance report, where the loan they have today is the thing everything else is measured against.

Up to two proposed loans sit beside the current mortgage, and the report does the work a purchase comparison can't: what the payment changes by, how long the new loan takes to pay back what it costs, what the interest adds up to over the full term, and when it's paid off compared to today.

This one has a prerequisite. The Current Mortgage section — remaining balance, monthly payment, interest rate, term — drives every savings figure on the page. Leave it blank and the report still builds, but it can't tell your client what changes, which is the whole reason they opened it. Get those four numbers off the borrower's statement before you start.

Each proposed loan comes from a fee sheet marked as a refinance, so mark the fee sheet first — a purchase fee sheet won't show up in the pickers.

"I've already decided"

Sometimes there's nothing to compare. The borrower picked the loan last week, or you're sending a pre-approval scenario, or somebody asked "what would this actually cost me?" and wants an answer they can forward to their spouse.

That's a single-loan report: one fee sheet, one page, no columns. Loan details, a payment breakdown, the itemized closing costs and prepaids, and the cash due at closing. It's the fastest of the three to produce and the easiest to read, and it's the right answer far more often than it gets used.

A comparison sent to a borrower who has already chosen doesn't reassure them — it reopens a decision they'd closed. When there's one loan, send one loan.

What doesn't change with the type

All three land you in the same place, so none of this should factor into the choice:

• The same builder. Live preview on one side, controls on the other — see the report builder. Edit the rate or the loan amount right in the preview and everything downstream recalculates.
• The same control over what shows. Include rows and Include charts trim any of the three down to what this conversation needs.
• The same branding, the same send. Save, then Send to email it, or PDF to download it. Purchase and refinance PDFs run two pages; a single-loan PDF fits on one. See sharing reports with borrowers.

If you pick wrong

A report's type is fixed the moment it's saved, because each type is its own report. So while a report is still new — before its first save — a Report type section sits in the builder rail and the other two cards are live links: click one and you're in that builder instead, with nothing lost.

After the first save, that section is gone. Switching means creating a new report of the right type and deleting the one you don't want, which takes about a minute and frees the saved-report slot back up. Nothing is stuck; it's just not a toggle.

One last rule of thumb, for when it's genuinely borderline: send the report that answers the question your borrower asked you in their own words. If they said "which one," compare. If they said "is it worth it," analyze. If they said "send me the details," send the details.

Related pages

• Purchase reports — up to three options, side by side.
• Refinance reports — today's mortgage against what you're proposing.
• Single-loan reports — one loan, clearly.
• The report builder — the controls all three share.
• Fee Sheets — where the numbers behind every report live.
• Sharing reports with borrowers — emailing, the PDF, and what the borrower sees.

Still not sure which one fits a conversation you're in? Email team@lendrtech.com — describe the borrower and we'll tell you what we'd send.