What Is Integration in Banking?

Managing a homeowners association (HOA) includes many financial management tasks for your clients. From paying invoices to balancing the books, HOA managers perform a variety of fiscal duties to ensure the association’s financial viability. Although HOA financing can seem like a complicated, time-consuming process, using association accounting software like CINC Systems gives you powerful features to make the job easier. Banking integration is one such feature.

In HOA accounting, banking integration (also known as bank reconciliation) refers to the process of linking each of your clients’ financial accounts to one place. For example, let’s say your client uses one bank or credit union to manage its reserve fund, and another financial institution for its general operating fund. With banking integration, you can add each account to your association management software’s dashboard. This means you only need to login to one location to view all of your clients’ accounts.

Using integration in banking will help you save time and manage your HOA clients’ money more effectively. It’s a “must-have” feature for any HOA accounting software. Here are some of the best reasons to use banking integration for HOA financial management.

Connecting All HOA Accounts in One Place

As mentioned, banking integration connects all of the HOA accounts in one place. With a cloud-based accounting software program like CINC Systems, banking integration also means that financial accounts are updated in real-time. This powerful feature saves you a lot of time as an HOA manager.

Prior to the availability of banking integration, HOA managers needed to visit multiple financial institutions and maintain several different ledgers for each of their clients’ accounts. This is a time-consuming process that prevents you from working efficiently to manage your clients’ finances. With association accounting software that includes banking integration, you’ll be able to free up more of your time to focus on other tasks.

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Advantages of Banking Integration

Banking integration offers many advantages for HOA management businesses. If your client uses many different financial institutions, integration is crucial for helping them with their accounting. It also gives you the following benefits.

Save Time

First, banking integration will save you time. Account balances are updated in real-time, as transactions occur, and can be viewed from one convenient dashboard. This helps you track your clients’ finances and assists with other aspects of financial management without wasting time logging into multiple different websites or visiting multiple different banks.

Stay Organized and Go Paperless

Banking integration also helps you stay organized. When you’re an HOA manager with multiple clients, organization is key to avoid becoming overwhelmed. Banking integration allows you to access your clients’ financial accounts in one place in your online, cloud-based dashboard. If you need to quickly check an account or cross-reference a transaction, you don’t have to worry about digging through multiple ledgers to find the information you need.

Additionally, banking integration can help your HOA management business go paperless. When your clients’ financial data is integrated into your association management software, you don’t need to keep as many statements or physical paper ledgers to manage their finances. Managing HOA finances online via banking integration cuts down on paper and streamlines your business.

Collect Resident Fees Online

Banking integration also makes it easier to collect and process resident fees online. By linking your clients’ financial accounts to your HOA management software, you can then create an online web portal where they can pay their dues and assessments electronically. As fees are collected, the money can be set to automatically deposit into the correct account. This saves time and reduces errors.

This means no more trips to the bank with deposits slips, then updating ledgers by hand. Additionally, you can automatically generate a list of residents who are delinquent in their payments. Using banking integration as part of your HOA management accounting software will improve the way your clients process their earnings. It’s a valuable solution that all HOA managers should try for themselves.

Automatic Deposits

Whenever you can automate a task, you save time and money for your own HOA management business as well as your clients. That’s one of the many reasons to use association accounting software with banking integration. Using this feature, you can set it up so that the HOA’s income is automatically deposited into the correct accounts.

In addition to dues and assessments paid by the HOA’s residents, this can include any other money owed to the HOA. You can also use banking integration to shift funds from one account to another. For example, if the board members want to move money from the reserve fund into the general operating fund, this can be performed done with an online banking program that uses integration.

Automatic Bill Pay

Deposits aren’t the only type of financial transaction that can be automated via banking integration. Using association accounting software, you can automatically pay bills for your HOA clients.

This includes invoices for projects, as well as payments for regular bills for services like landscaping, waste disposal, security, and utilities. Using banking integration to pay bills automatically will ensure that your HOA is never past due on important invoices. This helps your clients remain in good financial standing.

Monitor Transactions in Real-Time

Finally, banking integration enables you to monitor transactions in real-time, as they occur. As an HOA manager, it’s part of your job to help prevent fraud and financial mismanagement for your clients.

By monitoring bank transactions as they happen live, you’ll be able to catch any errors or suspicious activity right away. This means you can take action to stop potential financial problems before they become a bigger issue for your clients.

Use CINC Systems for HOA Banking Integration

To see how banking integration can help your HOA management business, try accounting software like CINC Systems. CINC Systems will enable you to manage all of your clients’ unique financial accounts in one convenient dashboard online. CINC System’s banking integration for HOAs will help you improve and grow your company. Click here to request a free software demo today.

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