Life on QuickBooks at Wyndham Capital Mortgage had reached an unacceptable level of manual data entry, Excel spreadsheets and data manipulation. Having squeezed every last drop they could out of the off-the-shelf financial tool, CFO Jeremy Abig and Controller Lisa Gawlik, determined that if they wanted to continue to support the growth of the company, they’d have to upgrade their accounting systems & supporting processes. This decision was further vindicated after seeing their team struggling to handle the workloads during a particularly fruitful year. By implementing Loan Vision, they were able to automate the majority of their accounting processes and now have complete confidence in the scalability of their department.
Change is often easier to accomplish before it’s absolutely necessary. This is why, in 2016, Abig and Gawlik began to take a look at their finance department’s operational shortcomings and how their accounting tools were playing a part. While their team was able to process the data from the average 500 loans per month at a speed that was deemed acceptable, they completed most of their work with only generic technologies that weren’t specifically designed to handle the intricacies of mortgage accounting. Having complete confidence in their leveraging of Quickbooks functionality, in a year that saw significant volume growth started to accentuate a number of limits of that system.
“When we saw a spike in business a few years back, we noticed that QuickBooks wasn’t able to handle all the transactions we were putting in,” admitted Gawlik. “Our goal was always to grow, and at that point, we knew that we were going to have to find a system that would be able to handle that growth.”
Gawlik found that the constant manipulation of data needed to just enter it into the G/L was bogging down her team and holding up other processes such as reconciliations.
She mentioned, “An overwhelming majority of our reconciliations were completed manually in Excel spreadsheets. Between this and the time-consuming nature of manually importing our loan information, most of our accounts wouldn’t be reconciled until a month in arrears.”
While Loan Vision can tackle many accounting challenges, what drives much of the change in finance departments such as Wyndham Capital Mortgage is automation. By leveraging advanced technologies to their fullest, the solution is able to complete routine, logic-based tasks that may take a user hours in just a matter of minutes. Even further, the automation can be scheduled at the user’s discretion, meaning the tasks can be completed during the workday or off-hours.
Wyndham Capital Mortgage deployed this technology for a number of their processes.
“A lot of the tasks that we were doing previously were executed with a multitude of spreadsheets and required data manipulation,” Gawlik continued, “For areas such as loan imports, Loan Vision directly connects with our LOS and is able to automate the process, which has definitely been a win for us.”
In addition to larger processes, smaller pieces of the Loan Vision puzzle, such as the Fixed Assets module, utilize technology & automation to improve the department’s efficiency.
Gawlik mentioned, “The Fixed Assets module has been the best thing that we’ve implemented in a long time. Before Loan Vision, we had a schedule that we kept in excel and no matter how meticulous we were, there was always one formula that was off, and we wouldn’t find it until later. Loan Vision makes it possible to quickly run a schedule and show all your additions, all your deletions, and the depreciation every month. Something that used to take 2-3 hours during close is now a 5-10 minute process at the most.”
With their previous setup, Wyndham Capital Mortgage’s finance department was spending the majority of their time manipulating and importing loan level data, causing a delay in that data hitting their general ledger. Loan Visions automation capabilities rid them of those workloads, and they are now able to complete processes, such as reconciliations of their accounts, in a quarter of the time.
“Having the direct import from our LOS has given us the ability to post and reconcile the transactions daily. Before Loan Vision, this would take at least half of a day, but now, at almost 3 times the size, it’s only an hour’s worth of work.” Gawlik explained, “We’re no longer waiting a month to reconcile our accounts. Now we’re able to do things, such as quickly run a reconciliation of our receivables and if we have a variance in UPB, start collecting those immediately. Because everything is so rapid, we’re able to pull that information in real-time, rather than waiting weeks for it.”
At the end of the day, the strongest evidence that Loan Vision has supported Wyndham Capital Mortgage’s growth lies in the fact that they’ve only added one person to the finance department, a sentiment that is not lost on Gawlik.
“Implementing Loan Vision has definitely helped us scale tremendously. We’ve only had to add 1 headcount, which is a big win for us,” noted Gawlik. “We are looking to double our loan volume again within the next year and are prepared to add an additional two, but we don’t necessarily know that we’ll actually need them.”
