Credit union automation for credit-card balances reconciliation

The Lab Consulting
10/11/2022

Credit union execs: Save 520 to 1,000+ hours per year, while freeing staffers for work they prefer

Your credit union’s members have credit cards. They make payments. Those payments need to be reflected in all your systems.

Sounds simple enough, right?

You’re already shaking your head, aren’t you? That’s because you know that the different systems in your credit union which contain members’ credit-card payment information don’t talk to each other. What’s even more maddening is that these systems—such as the credit-card platform and the core—are products from the exact same provider.

Think about that. This company, whose services aren’t exactly free, forces you and your staffers to perform “swivel-chair” activities, every single day. We’re talking about the dreaded stare-and-compare chore known as reconciliation or “recons.” Your people need to do a ton of work, just to see if the numbers from System A match those in System B.

Now, System A and System B, since they’re from the same provider, should match in the first place. But that’s a topic for a different blog.

The bottom line is that your credit union’s precious deposit-ops team is spending far too much of its time, every single day, on this tedious, monotonous, thankless chore.

There’s a solution: Automate it. It can be done—surprisingly quickly and painlessly—with RPA or robotic process automation bots from The Lab. We’re North America’s credit union automation authority.

In this article, we’ll show you how one credit union client of ours was able to automate this process. We’ve even made a little video of it; check it out:

The bot in this example does, basically, what a human does. It can “sit at the computer” and navigate across different platforms and systems. It can point, click, and type. It can save and name documents. All of that stuff.

When it comes to the credit cards, this bot begins by retrieving the T-reports and credit-card reports from the appropriate sub-folders on the credit union’s shared drive, based on the transaction date it’s programmed to filter for, and search on.

Next, it logs into the credit union’s intranet, again, just like an employee would. The bot even has its own login, password, and appropriate level of access authority—only what it needs for the chores it will perform.

Once in the intranet, it navigates directly to the “Visa Card Payments” section.

The bot drills down to the payments that were made. Next, it will export this information into the credit-card processing application. As noted above, the bot gives the report the proper filename, and saves it to just the right sub-folder, in just the right folder, on the credit union’s shared drive. It’s just like a person… if that person were the world’s fastest typist, who also never got tired, took breaks, or made mistakes.

Now the bot shifts its attention to the credit union’s client-management system in the core. Bots from The Lab can work with any system, any core, any provider. So for client-management systems, they be programmed to use Finastra UltraData, Fiserv Signature, Jack Henry CPS, and others. In this instance, the client-management system is FIS TBS ClientLink.

(The bots can also use Excel, Outlook, Acrobat… you name it.)

It’s now time for the bot to create a new batch. It enters the transaction information, backdates the transactions to the last business date, and then updates them. After doing that, it shifts to “batch browse” and changes the B-status to “Close” to give credit where it’s due.

Finally, the bot creates a summary report of its work on the shared drive for the business team to review. The bot can also be programmed, easily, to automatically email its findings to the exact recipients you choose. Can’t you just see the possibilities?

For the credit union in this example, it takes their staffers 20 minutes to perform this thankless recon—that is, seeing if the credit-card payments in one system match those in the other system… from the same provider! The bot, as you can see, performs the same procedure in just seconds.

The process is now 100-percent automated. It’s error-free. It creates newfound process resiliency. It frees up employees to perform higher-value, more satisfying tasks… in other words, it protects against turnover.

And amazingly, this one recon bot saves the average-sized credit union anywhere from 500 to over 1,000 hours of tedious labor, every single year. Little wonder bots from The Lab pay for themselves in short order.

Credit Union executives are turning to The Lab to accelerate automation/AI readiness, lay the groundwork for strategic end-to-end process/product innovation, and implement Robotic Process Automation (RPA) “bots” to automate dozens of processes. With as few as three RPA bots from The Lab, you, too, can begin implementing on your company-wide strategic innovation roadmap—and start seeing hard-dollar benefits within weeks.

The best way to appreciate the speed and game-changing power of the automation suites installed by The Lab is to see it for yourself. Schedule a free, no-obligation 30-minute screen-sharing demo with The Lab, and you’ll see RPA bots in action. You’ll learn how we do all this from our U.S. offices in Houston, with nothing outsourced or offshored, and get all your questions answered by our friendly experts. Hedge your company against employee turnover, eliminate errors, and put your organization on a roadmap to accelerate your automation and AI initiatives.

Simply call (201) 526-1200 or email info@thelabconsulting.com to book your demo today!

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