When we began discussions with Open Mortgage’s accounting department, they had been straining under heavy workloads, doing all they could to get a glimpse into loan-level data for years. Lacking the information the company craved, we found that their combination of Quickbooks, a proprietary sub-ledger, and multiple Excel files just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Not only did the operation lack access to granular detail, but it was also incredibly taxing with the team spending sometimes up to 8 hours on just one report. Sharmee Patel, the controller at Open, explained that their struggles “stemmed from processing information inefficiently, tracking information by loan and dealing with typos and a general lack of controls in QuickBooks.”
Sharmee was very upfront with us on what she wanted and had quite a few boxes she needed checked, but also recognized that our team would help her work toward the goals she had set for her department, saying “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 directly from the LOS via imports was key.” She continued, “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.”
The switch to Loan Vision opened a number of doors for Open’s finance team. Not only did the system give them access to the loan level detail they had been wanting and working hard for all those years, but they also have the time to dive into that data. With talking to Sharmee, she expressed, “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.”
“Before, we were manually checking our bank reconciliations and approving entries only at the very end of the month. We’re now able to do this during the month with greater efficiency. Now, we’re spending maybe a quarter of the time checking errors and making corrections, and do not need to spend that extra time during close making sure things are posted correctly.” She further explained, “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 have, in the past, taken us hours.”
While we revel in celebrating these types of successes, what was most intriguing about Open’s story, as well as many other customers we see, is the department’s shift from a basic accounting department to a strategic business partner. The time they’ve gained with Loan Vision helps them extend past the stigma of financial departments in the mortgage industry. “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 the controller. “We’ve been utilizing the report for a while now and it’s been very useful to our sales team, specifically, on knowing where the branches stand and how we can help them succeed.”
