“In order to balance properly, we had to take multiple steps in multiple QuickBooks accounts with multiple separate bank accounts,” Pat recalled. “Our corporate account was at a completely different bank, meaning that whenever we needed to pay the branches or vice versa, those transactions occurred by either ACH or paper check from their account to ours.”
The work-arounds the team had to develop in order to manage their branch network became more and more cumbersome, with even the most routine tasks proving to be extremely time consuming and inefficient. Dealing with these issues left Pat and his team wondering if there was a tool on the market that could help consolidate and simplify its accounting processes.
“At the time, we didn’t know if there was any other \way to manage it all, but it seemed that there had to be some way to make it more efficient,” shared Pat, “It was around that time when our Vice President of Business Development came across another institution that had been using Loan Vision and indicated that it could be a great option for us to streamline our accounting completely.”
In order to move on from their previous system, the team believed that if they were going to make the investment in a new accounting system, it had to prove worthwhile.
“We knew that if we were going to make such a huge change, we had to go with the right provider and not just settle for something different than we had before,” said Pat.
The decision-making committee at Mortgage 1 identified very early on that the most crucial part of this software investment would be finding an industry-specific platform, designed to facilitate the mortgage industries somewhat unique accounting requirements. The team knew that utilizing a tool readily designed for their industry would allow efficiency to effortlessly flow through the entire department, especially around the entering of data from the LOS.
“We really wanted the uploading of the fundings and the purchases from the LOS to be seamless, and we also wanted to combine all of our branch banking accounts in to one bank account that could be viewed at the organizational level easily,” explained Pat.
After making the decision to switch to Loan Vision, streamlining processes has provided many benefits for the team such as reducing the time the team used to spend on their accounting tasks as a whole.
Shaun Guyett, Accounting Manager at Mortgage 1, recalled one such major benefit. “For me, one of the most attractive things about Loan Vision is that everything can be uploaded. All we have to do is press a few buttons and the process is done, whereas before, the same processes took multiple hours and multiple buttons.”
With the help of Loan Vision, Mortgage 1 left behind their old methods to bring together all of the branch bank accounts into a single, centralized system, not just making tasks easier to handle, but also overhauling their reporting capabilities. The team recalls just some of the benefits they’ve seen since implementation.
“Consolidating the bank accounts has been huge for us, and we now have one system with the ability to separate everything out at the cost center level,” said Pat.
A detailed example offered up by Shaun highlighted the difference in how his team would have typically processed data with its old system compared to how it now processes the same data using Loan Vision functionality.
“Prior to Loan Vision we would have to process each appraisal manually by each branch. Now we only need one spreadsheet and each line item turns into an invoice line item with the correlating branch code, which easily saves us a few days right there.”
While much of the benefit to Mortgage 1 has been centered around process efficiency and the gains made, the information Loan Vision provides back out to the branches has also been a big win.
“Loan Vision has also made it a lot easier to report information at the branch level from Loan Vision compared to our old system,” said Shaun.
Along with the consolidation and simplification of accounts, the team now has even more control over how it manages the branches, including controls over exactly who sees what information.
“The ability to give branch manager access to information on only their particular branches has been key for us,” said Pat.
Shaun continued on to note that the branches themselves have benefited from the solution’s loan-level detail.
“Many of our branches have said that being able to see transactions for each loan number really makes things easier when managing their operations.”
After nearly two years of using Loan Vision, Mortgage 1 is now well-positioned to manage and support its branches in a way that is even more conducive to growth. Since implementation Mortgage 1 has seen a small increase in both volume and the number of branches they manage, handling the increased workloads without issue. The scalability of the solution means the Mortgage 1 finance team is excited about the future and Loan Visions ability to support them as they continue to expand.
“We’re now at the point where we’ve mastered our day-to-day operations, and now we’re prepared to dive deeper into the system to see what else Loan Vision can do to make better business decisions for our branches and the wider company,” explained Pat.
