GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.–CU*Answers is inviting CFO and accounting managers to attend a full-day CFO Strategies Roundtable event, covering topics that are important to today’s credit union financial leaders.
The event will be held on Wednesday, March 21, at the CUSO’s offices in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Among other things, participants will discuss the new requirements around the FASB Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) standards, and how the CUSO is preparing to respond to its clients’ needs. Special guest Charley McQueen from McQueen Financial Services will be speaking to the group about CECL from a vendor’s perspective, CU*Answer said.
The CUSO noted this will be the fifth year for the CFO Strategies Roundtable event, a focus group that allows CFOs to network with their peers, discuss tools and network solutions for the CFO and credit union accounting teams, and learn more about what drives the CUSO’s development choices. In previous years the day included a separate meeting of the Accounting Top 10 Focus Group, which is a more in-the-weeds focus group covering specific software development projects. This group has been suspended for this year to allow for a full day for the CFO Strategies event, CU*Answer said.
Separately, CU*Answers noted that in the Fall of 2017 it released some sweeping changes to the accounts payable system of it CU*BASE core processing platform, making it easier to pay vendors and process invoice payments. In addition to the improved workflow, approval controls can be activated so that invoices are authorized by specific employees before being selected for payment. This separation of duties helps credit unions satisfy examiners by ensuring that only those with appropriate authorization are approving vendor payments, the company said.
“:Investment processing was also beefed up last fall with a new dashboard that allows credit union investments to be added, changed, adjusted, closed or purged all in one place. Monthly investment accrual processing also requires fewer steps,” CU*Answers said. “More improvements are in the works for not only the accounts payable and investments systems, but for other accounting functions like subsidiary and ACH processing.”
Keegan Daniel, Manager of the Asterisk Intelligence team, added, “CU*Answers is working toward building out its operational databases not only for improving overall workflow but also for providing analysis of the many functions that accounting/back office teams perform.”