As a growing mortgage originator, Open Mortgage’s accounting department was beginning to feel the strain of their generic accounting solution. With most of their processes done manually in spreadsheets, the accounting team was taking hours to just get the data they needed. In addition, there was no efficient way to check for errors, approve journal entries, or complete a G/L reconciliation.
In 2018, Open Mortgage assessed the efficiency of their department and realized they could not continue as they were.
When asked about the experience with their previous accounting solution, Sharmee Patel, Open’s Controller, said, “at the time, we were using Quickbooks in conjunction with a proprietary subledger and multiple Excel files. As far as month-end reporting, the amount of manual compilation and data processing left us with increased room for error as well as a longer close cycle than necessary. Our pain points stemmed from processing information inefficiently, tracking information by loan and dealing with typos and a general lack of controls in QuickBooks.”
With Open’s accounting department compiling all the loan level details manually in Excel, they were spending up to 8 hours creating one margin report. The manual nature of their accounting department also hindered the team from understanding the data to its completeness, noting that the amount of work they were doing to get the loan level detail affected their ability to analyze any information that was being provided to management for decision making.
These challenges sparked Patel’s search for a new accounting system to replace QuickBooks. Armed with a fresh pair of eyes and a clear head, she set out to find a solution that would tick all of Open’s boxes.
“Open Mortgage strives to create a better experience for everyone who purchases a mortgage with us. From a marketing perspective, anything that can help us in the backend run more efficiently and allows us to better service the borrower overall is a win,” expressed Paul Herrera, Director of Marketing at Open Mortgage.
After extensive research, the accounting team at Open came to the decision that Loan Vision would be the best fit for their department.
“Looking at what some of our goals were, the ability to have loan-level reporting automated from an accounting platform is what we knew we needed. Having those scalable, loan-level transactions with the imports was key,” expressed Patel.
That need for automation also stemmed to their reverse branches as well.
“One other big thing I will really say that what helped us seal the deal was the fact that you had clients who dealt with reverse mortgages,” Patel mentioned. “Our reverse mortgage processes were a mess and when we realized you had other clients who had the same issue prior to Loan Vision, we knew this was a major advantage.”
Not only did Loan Vision’s capabilities at the time convince the team at Open to make the jump, the potential to be even greater really sealed the deal.
“What pulled us into Loan Vision was the fact that the sales team was so friendly and knowledgeable about this system. We were shown multiple demos and they were able to answer our questions and address our concerns with certainty. Most importantly, we felt that they shared the same vision for our team as we did.”
Open Mortgage went live on Loan Vision in April of 2018 after a relatively painless implementation. “Our implementation was very hands-on and smooth. We looked forward to our daily calls with the Loan Vision team,” shared Patel.
After implementation, Open’s accounting department was able to see results very early on, with Patel saying, “there are so many efficiencies we now have with Loan Vision, from processing and posting transactions to closing the books to data analysis. We are now able to spend extra time providing the data in a useful format to the senior executives so they can make better decisions for the company.”
The automation their team needed has definitely come in to play with those successes.
“Before, we were manually checking our bank reconciliations and approving entries only at the very end of the month. Because of this efficiency, I’m not spending that extra time during close making sure things are posted correctly,” expressed Patel. “The G/L Reconciliation tool also makes it possible to quickly run a report that will point you in the right direction and helps catch anything that needs further examination, something that would, in the past, take us hours.”
One of the biggest areas Open Mortgage has succeeded with Loan Vision is in reporting. With the use of the Excel reporting tool, Patel and her team have taken that 8-hour margin report down to mere seconds.
“Using the Excel reporting tool, we were able to create a specific report that gives branch profitability and tells us exactly how profitable the company is from each branch. This is not simply what the branches have access to with the Branch Portal, but how much they are fully contributing,” said Patel. “We’ve been utilizing the custom reporting for a while now and are able to assist our sales team, specifically on knowing where the branches stand and how we can help them succeed.”
While Loan Vision’s automation made reporting faster and gave Patel and her team time to analyze their numbers, it’s the depth of those reports that have been the real win.
Patel noted, “We now can easily go back to a prior period and run our custom reports for a custom range, whereas in QuickBooks, we would have to redo a lot of the manual work in excel to get everything consistent on the loan level basis.”
Patel can confidently say that her and her team aren’t just supplying executives with data but are an invaluable asset to their decision makers.
“Before, we didn’t have the time to access this detail. We were spending all of our time just trying to get a number,” she expressed. “Now we get them much quicker and can spend more time providing management the information they need to make our company more successful.”
