FORUM Credit Union Achieves Immediate ROI with Frontier

Business Drivers to Automate

The accounting department at FORUM Credit Union, a member-owned financial cooperative based in Fishers, Indiana, was juggling a complex, error-prone and time-consuming reconciliation process that wasn’t providing the level of detail they needed. Their manual reconciliation processes, particularly for credit and debit card transactions, involved multiple software tools and extensive manual intervention that took hours each week.

FORUM Credit Union had been a Frontier user since 2019, initially only using it to reconcile their Federal Reserve, accounts payable and corporate credit union accounts, as well as their mobile deposits, but in 2024 the team engaged with Frontier Professional Services with the ultimate goal of getting their entire balance sheet on Frontier. 

The new solution offered several advantages:

• Eliminated the need for Monarch and Access software, resulting in cost savings and a more stable, predictable process.
• Reports are downloaded daily and consumed directly into Frontier without any pre-processing.
• Frontier’s ability to import and match activity saved an estimated 45-60 minutes each day.
• Exception items are immediately visible, eliminating the need for separate exception reports.

Implementing Frontier has saved us an immense amount of time and money. It’s been a game-changer for our reconciliation processes.”

Proof Points

• Eliminated the expense of Monarch software, achieving immediate ROI on the professional services engagement.
• Saved significant time (about an hour a day) with Frontier’s automated import and matching capabilities.
• Improved accuracy and reduced the potential for errors and fraud.
• Increased employee satisfaction by reducing manual workload and allowing staff to focus on higher-value tasks.

“Immense” Time Savings and Elimination of Other Software

After a few years of using Frontier to reconcile accounts on a limited basis, FORUM Credit Union recognized the need for a more efficient and automated solution to handle the high volume of transactions and reduce manual intervention for their credit and debit card settlement process. The credit union had been using a combination of Monarch software, an Access Database and Excel to manage these reconciliations, which was both time-consuming and costly.The Road to 100% Balance Sheet Automation

The reconciliation process involved:

• Downloading large reports of credit and debit card activity and storing them in a folder.
• Importing these reports into a Monarch model to produce linear extracts.
• Uploading the Monarch extracts into an Access Database for matching purposes to identify exceptions.
• Manually plugging exceptions into an Excel reconciliation and clearing old carry-over exception items.

Jim Catanzarite, Assistant Vice President of Accounting, and Alisa Tridle, Accounting Assistant Manager, were highly involved in the initiative to expand the usage of Frontier and shared their experience with us.

“Implementing Frontier has saved us an immense amount of time,” said Catanzarite. “We were able to eliminate the cost of Monarch software and significantly reduce the time spent on daily reconciliations.”

[Frontier] hasn’t been a staff eliminator, which we don’t want it to be, it’s more been a staff maintainer. As the credit union continues to grow, we can be staffed at the same level and leverage technology more.”

Immediate ROI on Investment

The best part? The cost of the new reconciliation process built by Trintech’s Professional Services was less than the cost of the software it eliminated, meaning FORUM Credit Union was net positive from Day 1. The new process allowed them to streamline their operations and improve accuracy. The reports are now directly consumed into Frontier, and the time saved is estimated at 45-60 minutes daily. Exception items are immediately visible in the reconciliation, eliminating the need for separate exception reports. Today, FORUM’s matching accuracy with Frontier is estimated at 99%, according to Catanzarite.

Because the tool is so easy to use, balancing debit and credit card transactions and exception management doesn’t have to be handled by someone with in-depth training and years of experience. Tridle added, “We’ve restructured our department based on Frontier. Tasks that used to take hours are now completed in minutes. I’m now able to focus on building out Frontier and making it even more efficient.”