Sync Together

From landscaping to security and more, community associations create a lot of professional partnerships, and software is often one of the most difficult partnerships to evaluate. There are so many moving parts—from communications to electronic voting—and it can be overwhelming to understand precisely what is needed for your association management company.

Banking integration is an even more challenging topic. The term itself can have a lot of different meanings, and without fully understanding what is being offered to you, you risk getting far less than you needed. Understanding what is important in a banking integration versus what is sold to you as important is critical.

To understand what is important within a banking integration, we first need to debunk what’s not important. One of the most common sales terms thrown around during the integration discussion is the term “API,” or “application programming interface.” Don’t be fooled if someone tells you this is the be-all-end-all of their integration; nearly all digital interactions use an API.

Rather than relying on technical jargon to understand your banking integration within your software providers, there are some core needs you should consider when understanding the banking integration:

• Payment matching: A top-tier banking integration will reconcile improperly submitted payments on all specific data points within the system, making account reconciliation incredibly efficient.
• Payment integration: Automated communication where the software is receiving information in real-time will process homeowner payments smoothly and account for misapplied payments automatically.
• Bank statements: Comprehensive banking integrations will automatically pull bank statements on the first of the month.

These are just a few considerations one should have when understanding the relationship between their bank partner and software provider. For a full understanding of the meaning behind a successful banking integration—along with a cheat sheet of questions to ask your banking partner and software provider—review our integration guide here.