Construction Lender Portal: What It Is, and How to Send a Draw Without One
A construction lender portal is a shared workspace where a general contractor submits a draw package and the lender reviews it, instead of trading email attachments.
That is the idea. Whether it helps you depends on one thing: your bank has to agree to use it.
What a Lender Portal Does
In a portal, the lender sees the whole package in one place: the G702 summary, the G703 line items, the invoices behind them, and lien waiver status. Questions and approvals are recorded against the draw rather than scattered across inboxes.
The Problem a Portal Is Trying to Solve
Emailing a draw package has real weaknesses:
Version confusion. The lender asks for a revised G703. You send a new one. Now there are two in the thread and nobody is sure which is current.
Lost questions. A question about line 14 lands in a shared inbox, gets forwarded, and sits for days.
No visibility. Once the package is sent, you do not know whether anyone has opened it.
A scattered record. If a draw is disputed months later, the paper trail is spread across inboxes and shared drives.
Why Most Contractors Cannot Count On One
A portal only works when the lender signs up, learns it, and uses it for your loan. Many banks already have their own process and will not adopt a contractor's tool. A contractor with loans at two banks would need both to agree.
So the practical question is how to fix those four problems without asking your lender to change anything.
What DrawStack Does Instead
DrawStack does not ask your lender to join a portal. Nobody at the bank needs an account.
One package. You build the draw in DrawStack and it produces the G702 and G703 from your schedule of values and invoices. A billing check flags lines that look overbilled while the draw is still a draft.
Sent the way your lender already works. Your lender gets the package as a PDF by email, with a link to view the same package in a browser. There is nothing to install and no login.
One current version. The link shows the draw's line items and a download of the full package you sent: the forms with the attached invoices and supporting documents.
A record on your side. DrawStack records each time the link is opened, and the draw moves through its statuses from draft to funded.
What to Ask Your Lender
You do not need permission to send a cleaner package. It still helps to ask two things before your first draw:
1. Who reviews draws, and which email address should the package go to?
2. Is there a submission cutoff for the review cycle?
Then send every draw the same way, to the same place, in the same order.
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