Customer Stories
Amerihome Mortgage Cuts Its Close and Ensures Audit Readiness With FloQast
Headquartered just outside of Los Angeles in Westlake Village, AmeriHome Mortgage provides customers with reliable information and tools to help make a daunting process easier.
Given what the company does, however, AmeriHome Mortgage’s accounting team often found itself inundated at the end of each month. Not only did it need to complete the close, but the majority of AmeriHome Mortgage’s loans close at month-end. Frequent audit requests, which are common in the industry, added to the glut of work.
Accounting Manager Kimber McLaughlin wanted to not only reduce the time needed to close, but also improve the flux analysis process so the management team consistently received accurate financial information. In FloQast’s close management software, AmeriHome Mortgage found a like-minded partner.
Relying on FloQast AutoRec and Variance Analysis, AmeriHome Mortgage’s accounting team was able reduce its close by about six days while saving individual team members several hours each month.
“I believe FloQast is just amazing,” McLaughlin said. “I’d recommend FloQast 100%. Everything is so much quicker and easier. I even wear my FloQast shirt all the time.”
Impacting the Month-End Close
Before FloQast, AmeriHome Mortgage’s month-end close took half a month — 15 days to be exact — because of an unwieldy number of reconciliations that needed to be completed. For instance, one of McLaughlin’s coworkers has a reconciliation with nearly 100,000 transactions.
FloQast AutoRec, which uses artificial intelligence to automate much of the tedious reconciliation process, changed that colleague’s job.
“Using AutoRec has saved her a ton of time; it matches thousands and thousands of records,” McLaughlin said. “The time-saving is kind of ridiculous.”
McLaughlin saw the benefits in her job as well.
“Before, I would manually go through and match all the debits and credits on a certain transaction number, and then cancel those out to see what was left,” said McLaughlin. “Now, I can just import two different files and it matches almost everything on the first go.”
Simplifying the Flux Analysis
AmeriHome Mortgage’s accounting team performed a flux analysis each month; however, pre-FloQast, “…it was just too time-consuming,” McLaughlin admitted.
Similar to its drawn-out close, AmeriHome Mortgage’s flux analysis process had been labor-intensive.
The accounting team would use Sage Intacct software to run reports. Then it would export them to Excel. At that point, team members would add notes and links to supporting documents.
The team repeated those steps often, especially during the quarter-end close and the year-end close.
FloQast Variance Analysis automated the process and saved copious amounts of time. It also facilitated communication with management.
“I like being able to put all my explanations in there so my manager can just look in FloQast where he already is anyway, and then see the explanations,” McLaughlin said.
Editing the Audits
A standard audit is far from fun, but according to McLaughlin, FloQast makes it manageable.
“With FloQast, we can provide auditors with a list of all signed-off recs and handle them in just a few seconds, rather than having to send over individual scans,” McLaughlin said. “You can easily create a PDF or export it to give to our auditors, which is very convenient.”
It’s just one more example of how FloQast has made life easier for McLaughlin and her team.
“FloQast seems to truly understand what the accounting team needs,” McLaughlin said. “I don’t wake up in the middle of the night thinking, ‘Oh no, did we forget x, y, z?’”
