Carter Bank Achieves 80% Automatic Account Reconciliation with Frontier
Case Study
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Business Drivers to Automate
Carter Bank is a state-chartered community bank headquartered in Martinsville, Virginia, operating 65 branches in Virginia and North Carolina. They are long-time customers of Frontier by Trintech but have been steadily increasing the use of Frontier throughout their financial operations to increase automation and efficiency. The skyrocketing popularity of person-to-person (P2P) payment solutions like Zelle® quickly made automation a priority. As Tammy Ingram, Senior Vice President/Accounting Operations Manager, told us, “Zelle reconciliation includes so many moving pieces and account numbers, we knew that manual balancing would leave a great deal of room for human error and would be very time-consuming. With the rapid increase
in Zelle transactions, an automated system to match transactions and keep everything flowing correctly became crucial.”
Solution in Action
Carter Bank looked to Frontier to help it calm the P2P payment chaos. hey saw that Frontier has built-in processes and procedures that offer good control, and knew it offered the purpose-built automation the bank required. But they knew the transformation wouldn’t happen overnight. As Senior Staff Accountant Casey Peters told us, “The buildout takes some time, but the benefits are absolutely worth it.” Once Trintech built their Zelle reconciliation, only five files were required for balancing.
Now, with the buildout completed, the interface between the files is very precise and enables them to complete Zelle balancing in a matter of minutes, as opposed to hours spent manually matching.
With P2P’s booming popularity, they realized the value of reconciliation automation, which can increase efficiencies, strengthen internal controls, and reduce errors and reconciliation time.
With the increase in the number of P2P transactions and customers banking totally online, automation was not an option – it was a requirement. Frontier offered the controls and the discipline to manage these increases.”
Achieving 80% Automation
Now their core system, general ledger system, and the Frontier system now interface and integrate data collection, tracing and transaction management, which increased with automation. Frontier set up maximum rules and automatically matches debits and the credits. Now, account reconciliation review and approval occur every day, and if there’s an issue with the file they receive from Zelle, they’re able to resolve it much sooner.
Today, at least 80% or more of their daily operations are on Frontier and reconciled automatically. This includes the Federal Reserve, ATM and loan clearing accounts, loans and deposits in general, fixed assets, cash advances and investment trade date accounting. As Peters told us, “Our Federal Reserve account went from being a full-time manual job to being balanced within 10 minutes at most.” Their ATM international transaction fees, settlement and expense accounts just flow through without disruption, and the payments department manages any reconciliation
of disputed items against the general ledger.
The team at Carter Bank tells us that holding their loan clearing accounts and real-time suspense accounts in Frontier has helped streamline their close-out process. Before, they needed to question entries at month-end, after they received the manual reconciliation. Now, they see outstanding items in Frontier and can have more time to resolve these accounts before the end of the month and quarter. Their fixed assets system is connected and approved in Frontier as well.
Proof Points
- Precise file interface enabled them to complete Zelle balancing in a matter of minutes, as opposed to hours spent manually matching.
- Reallocated several full-time employees that were working full-time on manual reconciliations.
- 80% or more of the bank’s daily operations are on Frontier and reconciled automatically.
- The Federal Reserve account went from being a full-time manual job to being balanced within 10 minutes.
- Frontier Reconciliation catches any entry error the next day, as opposed to waiting for month-end.
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