(Archive) GOLD 21.05 May 2021

May 23, 2021

PRV Offered by Earnings Edge

 

The goal of Post Release Validation (PRV) is to research software enhancements that may have an financial impact on a credit union’s income statement.  The team adds an extra layer of verification efforts beyond the initial software deployment to assist with further testing of the varied configurations and environments that are used post release.  Through their interaction with clients just outside the regular software release, PRV engages clients to take part in exploring new software and processes in CU*BASE so that they utilize CU*BASE more effectively.  Interested in PRV for your credit union?  Contact Earnings Edge at earningsedge@cuanswers.com for more information.

 

Star of the Show/Member Service

 

Xpress Teller is Here!

Learn more: Xpress Teller Overview

Xpress Teller is a new teller processing platform to CU*BASE, designed to streamline and simplify the teller experience, offering an alternative that was built with today’s changing credit union lobbies in mind. Xpress Teller is not designed to be a replacement for Standard Teller. Credit unions can use Xpress Teller, Standard Teller, or both! Xpress Teller is accessed by a new Tool 1600 Xpress Teller.  Xpress Teller includes these exciting new features:

Expanded Search

The first screen has a powerful and easy-to-use new search engine that gives tellers a single input field to enter any data about the member and look for that data across dozens of key data points. This includes many new ones, including driver’s license number, phone number, email address…even online banking username!

Keep Marketing Campaigns and Promotions Top of Mind 

Your credit union can upload your own marketing images for display on the Xpress Teller search screen. Included are spaces for four graphics you can use for product promotions, service reminders, reminders about how to convey your members-are-owners message, and any fraud/security reminders you may have.

Photo ID on Screen

Now you can display member photo IDs directly on the ID verification screen in Xpress Teller.

Customize with New Workflow Controls 

The new workflow controls for Xpress Teller gives your credit union unprecedented control over the available features and how the tool works for your tellers, allowing for a gradual adoption of Xpress Teller. Roll this out with a few head tellers, then keep it that way or move to using it by branch or credit union wide.

Additional New Features

Check out these other exciting new features!

• A Single Funds In screen. Cash, outside checking, in-house checks, and miscellaneous advances are all entered in one screen.

• Easily access the Last Ten Transactions on an Account from a new look up next to the account.

• Your teller drawer is automatically activated the first time you access Xpress Teller.

Interested in Learning More?

• Visit the Kitchen page for the full details of this enhancement, and read 10 Decisions to Make Now to prepare for your Xpress Teller strategy: https://cuanswers.com/resources/kitchen/t2-xpress-teller/ 

• Questions? https://www.cuanswers.com/contact-form/#dept=earningsedge

Save space on your calendar for April 15, May 20, and June 24 for informational webinars with our teams.

 

Introducing Vertical Receipts – Not Just for Xpress Teller

This project creates a new style of receipt output for teller and other receipts produced by CU*BASE, using a vertical format instead of the traditional horizontal layout. The framework for vertical receipts will be introduced in the 21.05 CU*BASE release, BUT – it is not a turn it on and go type of option. This implementation involves updates to hardware, additional software, and coordination between your data processor and your credit union. Time to make a plan!

·         Visit the Vertical Receipts Kitchen page to learn more about making the switch: https://cuanswers.com/resources/kitchen/vertical-receipts/   

·         Questions? https://www.cuanswers.com/contact-form/#dept=imaging 

·         Remember that vertical receipts are used by Xpress Teller, but you do not have to use Xpress Teller to get vertical receipts.

·         Sign up for Vertical Receipts in the CU*Answers Store: https://store.cuanswers.com/product/vertical-receipts/.

 

 

A New Way to Access What's New (That's This Page!)

 

What's New? Use This Tool to Find Out Fast

Here’s a new tool to add to your favorites! Use this tool to quickly jump to the CU*BASE Online Help “What’s New” page. This page lists the most recent release updates for CU*BASE, with links to check out updated documentation and other resources. To make it easy, the tool number will be set as the release number; starting with Tool #2105 What’s New in CU*BASE in this release.  Simply pop the release into the tool number box and away you go to see what’s new.

 

Audit

Now Monitor Abnormal Activity Against the Member's Patterns

Learn more: Overview: Abnormal Activity Monitoring

Like many of our credit union compliance teams, AuditLink uses the Abnormal Activity Monitoring (AAM) tool every month to monitor activity by groups of members as compared to other people in that same group (is John acting the same as his peers?). With this release we are adding new tools embedded within the AAM tool that will allow credit unions to watch for many types of potentially fraudulent transaction activity. These new options will monitor members compared to themselves (is John behaving consistently for John?), watching how activity patterns change over a period of time. For example, one pattern could monitor to see if a member makes an unusual number of ATM withdrawals in the same day, or if the amount of credit card purchases suddenly spike above what is typical for that member.

 

This fully customizable approach to monitoring for fraud uses CU*BASE tools to mitigate threats and decrease losses while reducing the cost of management and satisfying compliance requirements. You start by configuring the patterns you want to watch for, then run the monitoring tool to review a list of members whose activity matches the pattern settings. Included are velocity triggers (how much activity), out-of-the-ordinary triggers (activity that’s different from usual), and idle activity triggers (members who suddenly have activity after a period of none).

Interested in Learning More?

·         AuditLink’s “Preparing for, Configuration, and Utilization of the New Abnormal Activity Monitoring” webinar on May 25^th from 2 – 2:30 PM ET also covers Abnormal Activity Monitoring.  Register here: https://www.cuanswers.com/resources/edu/courses/syllabi/?course=AAM

·         Also save space on your calendar June 8^th from 3 – 3:30 PM ET for a special webinar with AuditLink on implementing and managing the new pattern recognition functionality. Register here: https://www.cuanswers.com/resources/edu/courses/syllabi/?course=SE.2021.11

Accounting/Back Office

We've Greatly Improved the Process of Managing Subsidiaries

We’ve streamlined subsidiaries in a big way this release, consolidating tools and enhancing the ones that remain with a contemporary approach and styling. If you work with subsidiaries, this is your release! 

A Modern Approach with a New Subsidiary Dashboard

With the new streamlined approach to working subsidiaries with a new Subsidiary tool (Tool #1772 Work/View Subsidiaries).  We’ve simplified the subsidiary processing, obsoleting some screens, and greatly enhanced the screens that remain. 

• Add, maintain, adjust, and close subsidiary records right from the new modern dashboard.  We have consolidated three tools into one! Additionally, access a view-only version via Tool #1773 View Subsidiaries.

• View subsidiary transaction history records with the current dates first.

• Add Comments when adjusting, closing, adding or maintaining items.

• Purge multiple item types together.

Included are two enhancements requested in idea forms from West Michigan Credit Union:  You can now search open subsidiary items by partial description and update descriptions from the History screen.  We have even expanded the dollar amounts in fixed assets to allow million-dollar amounts.

Monthly Subsidiary Processing Gets a Revamp Too! We have consolidated five tools into the renamed Tool #305 Process Monthly Subsidiaries. Now with just two screens you can post multiple subsidiary types at once! 

From the first screen (shown to the right) buttons give you access two additional screens (not shown):  a detail view that allows you to adjust the monthly expense amount for an item “on the fly” prior to posting and a listing of posting history.  Gone are those pesky work files!  The Month Last Processed and Month to Process Now automatically default with the appropriate dates based on the last time that monthly processing occurred. 

Enhancement to Subsidiary Reports

Reports, reports, reports! With this release, we have sunset some reports and enhanced the remaining subsidiary reports with more filters, a new print option, and more!

Interested in Learning More? Save space on your calendar for Friday, May 21^st from 10 – 11 AM ET for a training that will go into these changes in more detail. Register for this training here: https://www.cuanswers.com/resources/edu/courses/syllabi/?course=SE.2021.8

 

Enhance Query Automation

Thank you to TruChoice Credit Union for their Idea form!  Would you like to schedule queries or reports to run more often than monthly?  We have enhanced the Report and Query Scheduler feature to allow weekly or daily frequencies. This will allow more flexibility especially for queries that some credit unions run daily.

Just a reminder that even with the increased frequency options, this is not a “save it and forget it” process. It will be important to review all of your report automation settings at least once a month, and especially after releases where we make changes to database tables. 

 

Cosigners Receiving Delinquent Notice Now Documented in Tracker

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not a co-signer received a delinquency notice, now it’ll be easier than ever to find out. The Notice Tracker which records when a delinquent loan notice is produced on a loan account will now include an additional line stating whether or not the co-signer also received a copy of the notice. Either “No additional signers received a notice” or “The following additional signer(s) received a notice: John Doe, Fred Smith” will appear on an additional line on the delinquent Notice Tracker.

 

Enhancements to New and Refinanced Loan History Report

Tool #554 New/Refinanced Loan History report has been re-vamped to make it easier to get a picture of loan disbursements during a specific date range.  We have also added disbursement information for credit card loans along with closed-end and line-of-credit loans available today.  Each loan type is totaled separately on the summary report output and we no longer list each disbursement type separately.  Other new features include:                

• Insurance premiums, fine payments and escrow transfers are no longer included in the disbursement totals.

• Filter options have been expanded to be multi-select and now include Business unit, Loan purpose code, Loan security code, Loan officer code, and loan balances (CU owned, Investor owned).

• Account adjustment/payment reversal transactions can be included if desired.   

• Written-off loans can be excluded.  

The updates made to this report may help to obtain “loans granted year-to-date” data for the 5300 Call Report. 

 

 

Are Your Members Earning Dividends or Not? Help ‘Em Out

Do you have members within a dividend program that are not qualifying for the dividend, but are still being charged for participation? This tool will be a great one to keep in your toolkit to assist those members in making the best of their checking products.

Tool #1345 Switch Products for Non-Earning Chk Acct allows you to find non-earning checking accounts and change the assigned DIVAPL, including a process for moving funds to the appropriate GL and creating a maintenance record. A view-only version of this tool is also available as Tool #1350 View Products for Non-Earning Chk Accounts.

This tool was introduced in 2020 under a special beta for select credit unions that extensively use products that allow fees for enrollment in a dividend earning checking account. With this tool, they are able to ease the burden on members that are not meeting earning metrics. Feedback from this special beta period has been positive, and we look forward to including this tool in this release for all!

 

 

Asterisk Intelligence

Are YOU Authorized? See for Yourself in the New Authorized User Inquiry

Thank you to the CU*Answers Client Services and Education team for developing this idea.  

Security Officers, you are going to love this one – a new tool to easily review your credit union’s profile of users that are authorized to upload and/or download data to and from CU*BASE. Tool #1355 Download/Upload Authorized Users Inquiry lists each permission by user, showing which library and files in which they are authorized to transfer data. Use this tool to sort by upload or download only, or search by user, library, or file.

Data for this inquiry is updated at the end of every day, which means that if a change is made to anyone’s permissions, you won’t see that change reflected until the next day. This project does not replace the LSECAUDITM report that is produced monthly. You can still find this monthly report in CU*Spy, or use this convenient tool for more current information.

 

VAT: New Charts, Trends, and Spruced Up Pie and Column Charts

The VAT development team has been busy! In this release, you can find VAT enhancements with new charts in Tool #817 Skip-a-Payment History Dashboard, a new trend line option in Tool #476 Loan Write-off/Charge-off History Dashboard, and improved data thresholds on all pie/column charts to make the charts clearer and cleaner to read and utilize for your board reporting and presentation needs.

 

New Features for the Auto-Post RDC Deposit Dashboard

The Auto-Post RDC Deposit Dashboard (Tool #1985) will be getting some features in this release, including Common Bonds, Member Connect, Data Sources, and standard dashboard Analysis. The Analysis screens include the top hours for deposits, the top depositors, and month-over-month and quarter-over-quarter comparisons to allow a deep dive of your RDC data. Additionally, the dashboard was simplified to show only relevant columns of information, removing the Trans Seq, GL#, and Trans Type columns from the dashboard display.

 

Learn More about eSignature Activity with Where Your Members eSign

Wondering how your efforts to increase eSign activity are going?  The new Tool #1113 Where Your Members eSign is a dashboard that pulls out all the stops, showing information about your eSignature transactions – member information such as signer’s name and account base.

It catalogues information such as the date eSign was offered, the date it was completed, and the number of hours to complete the signing, plus the number of documents to sign, number of signatures required, and the channel the signing came through. That is a lot of data about your eSignature transactions! This dashboard includes the standard dashboard features like Common Bonds and Member Connect. Use this tool to answer questions such as,

o    How many loans did we close using eSign last month\quarter?

o    How many memberships did we open with eSign last month\quarter?

o    What staff member closed the most loans with eSign?

o    Who at our credit union uses eSign the most?

o    What is the average time it took our membership to eSign our documents?

The analysis is powerful on this dashboard, giving you multiple areas to analyze, like document counts, branch analysis, signings by time and age, form type counts, signings by channel and age, as well as general statistics.

 

Take Control of Your Bill Pay with the New iPay Dashboards

Curious how your members are using bill pay, and who’s subscribed? We’re excited to introduce Tool #1107 Where Your Members Pay Bills (iPay) and Tool #1108 Bill Pay Subscriber Analysis (iPay). These data intensive dashboards come equipped with features that allow you to quickly sort, analyze, research, and export your bill pay data, and more. These dashboards make it easy to create the data you want for research and monitoring, and of course, using the Export or Member Connect features.

Beyond the ability to create streamlined data sets, these interactive dashboards allow for in-depth analysis of trends and the total dollars and number of items being paid via check vs. electronic payments, for both businesses and individuals. With so much available information these dashboards are chock full of possibilities!

 

EFT

Credit Card Batch Skip-a-Payment Improvements

Tool #317 is receiving an updated title, now called Credit Card Batch Skip-a-Payment Config.To go along with the refreshed name, this tool has been updated to allow for multiple selection for Loan Categories to which the skip-a-payment options will apply, saving time making multiple programs for each loan category. In addition, we’ve made some clarifying verbiage changes to the screen and the simulation and update reports.

Ordering a New ATM/Debit Card for a Joint Owner Just Got Easier

Thank you to County City Credit Union for this Idea Form!

Now when using Tool #11 to order a new card, a new button displays, ‘Find Another Owner’ to display joint owners associated with the attached funding account suffix. When a joint owner is selected, the joint owner’s name populates the Line 1 Name field as well as the Phone #, SSN and Date of Birth in the Card Activation Fields.

More Options and Flexibility for Your Credit Card Cash Back Programs

Has your credit union configured a credit card cash back program yet? If not, now is the time to start, with improvements to the program configuration arriving in this release! Specifically, we have made improvements to processing payouts, both in the frequencies for payout and the options to payout to a member’s savings or checking. Currently, the payouts are paid monthly, but after this implementation, payouts can be configured to pay monthly, quarterly, or annually! Your credit union can also configure to allow members to choose to have their payout apply as a regular loan payment or pay to a savings or checking account of their choice.

Additionally, a new inquiry tool is available to review cash back rewards earned, forfeited and paid each month by using the Payout History Inquiry button in the CC Reward Maintenance feature or the Cash Back Rewards button in Member Account Inquiry of the credit card loan.

 

 

Member Facing - Internet Retailer

Charge a Different Fee for Your Online Stop Pays

This project was implemented as the result of an Idea Form from Allegan Credit Union.

Improve your Internet retailer footprint with this release! This release allows you to make your online offering less expensive and encourage members to go online to stop checks.  Currently the same fee is charged for a stop pay no matter where it’s done.  With this release, Tool #777 Savings/Checking Products Configuration will allow you to differentiate your online stop pay fee from one that is initiated by your credit union. Encourage members to do it themselves by giving them a special deal online!

 

Miscellaneous

Changes to Membership Designations

Labels for MI and MO Membership Designation Codes Can Now Be Updated

With this release you can now configure unique labels on the configuration for your default MI (Individual) and MO (Organization) Membership Designation codes. Use Tool #523 Membership Designation Configuration if you wish to customize these two codes to use something different from the standard Name, Joint Owner, Misc Owner, and DBA labels.

Getting Ready for a 2nd Business Banking Platform Coming This Summer!

While you’re in your Membership Designation configuration changing those labels, you might notice a change we’ve made in preparation for a new online banking product we’ll be introducing later this year: a single-login product designed specifically for business memberships who don’t need the full multi-user controls offered by BizLink 247 (formerly It’s My Biz 247) business online banking.

 

 

MICR Line No Longer Updated on the Starter Checks Screen

The MICR number, which is used by other processes other than starter checks, can no longer be edited on the starter checks screen. You can still view the MICR number via the new view option access via Tool #1995 View MICR Line Configuration. Contact a Client Service and Education Representative if you need to adjust your MICR number.

Savings/Checking Dividend Application Configuration Now Protected from Inadvertent Changes

The screen used to configure savings/checking dividend applications (Tool #777), now has locks on certain sensitive fields as well as some new warning messages. Whether dividends are calculated and posted at end-of-day or beginning-of-day is now listed at the top of the screen.  If you have questions about changing these fields on this critical screen, contact the Client Services and Education department.

G/L Lookup Added to Member Account Adjustment

Thank you, Commodore Perry Credit Union for your Idea form!  With this release we have added a lookup button to the Offset G/L account # fields on the second screen of the full account adjustment screen (Tool #492).

Generate PIN Automatically for Instant Card Issue Orders

Thank you, Frankenmuth Credit Union for your Idea form!  With this release we have added an automated PIN generation button to the Instant Card Issue update screen.