Bank Transition Checklist

Upon confirmation of the date at which your associations will be fully transitioning banks, there are a few questions you will want to ask that will guide your transition process:

Initial Questions

1) Will your new bank require an update to your Association Codes (Lockbox Codes)? If so, your owner's account numbers will be changing upon transition. *Only change association codes so if required as it adds additional work to the transition.

2) What will be your new method of receiving homeowner payments? Confirm with the bank your options for homeowners to make electronic payments.

30-60 Days Out from Transition Date

• Notify homeowners and board members of the upcoming bank transition. It will be important to let them know that the lockbox address will be changing, and the homeowner payment platform could be changing (if applicable).
• Complete all necessary paperwork with the new bank required to begin opening new accounts.
• Gather check signatures to provide to new bank (if more than one).
• IF changing lockbox codes, you will want to apply the current Vantaca account number to the OldAccount2 field for each homeowner account. This will prevent disruption if owners continue to use their previous Account number when submitting payments, as the OldAccount2 field can be passed as an additional identifier in the bank's payment validation.
  • • For the above scenario, contact support@vantaca.com to assist with updating the account number fields in bulk.
• Send in a ticket to vendorsupport@vantaca.com and copy your contact at the new bank to initiate the passing of integration credentials to Vantaca, as well as the activation of the integration.

15-30 Days Out from Transition Date

• Enter your new bank under Settings > Banks, ABA Check and ABA Deposit fields will be where you input the bank's routing number.
• Begin entering your new bank accounts under Association > Bank Accounts. See the following article for adding bank accounts on this page: https://support.vantaca.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018572172-Association-Bank-Accounts When adding your bank accounts, you will want to label what will be the main operating accounts as 'Other DDA' and then the day prior or the day of you will switch them from 'Other DDA' to 'Operating'. The reason behind this is that every association can only have one 'Operating' bank account labeled as such so you do not want your main operating to change prior to the go-live day for this bank.
• Auto Draft Bills: If you have any recurring auto drafts out of your current bank accounts, you will want to update the banking credentials that the auto draft service provider has on file to your new bank accounts.
• In Vantaca, if you have Service Contracts set up for your auto draft vendors, you will want to update their GL Detail to reflect the new bank account. This can be done under Association > Services by editing the current contract beneath that provider.

0-20 Days Out from Transition Date

• Update your Lockbox Remittance Address under Settings > Company Info to reflect the new lockbox address. You may need to update this on your Third Party Printing service website (if applicable).
• IF changing lockbox codes, update all association codes that will need to be changed.
  • Once changed, all lockbox payments to the previous bank will become exceptions as they will no longer match the association code or homeowner account number.
• Ask your new bank if they require scanline testing for statements and coupons. If yes, then you will need to provide the new bank with a few samples of statements / coupons to confirm that the scanline will work for accepting homeowner payments.
• Send Statements / Coupons to your owners once the scanline has been confirmed with new bank.
• Begin transferring funds from previous bank accounts into new accounts. You can either cut a check to fund the new accounts, or initiate an ACH Transfer from the Accounting > Transfer Funds screen (be mindful of your bank account's minimum $ alert setting, this can be set to $0 if transferring the entire account balance).

• Notify previous bank of lockbox termination. This can be done 3-4 days before the termination date. Ask the old lockbox to forward any payments to the new lockbox address. It is not recommended to continue receiving payments to the prior lockbox after your transition date.

Transition Date (All of this can be done the day prior to transition)

• Assign new operating accounts as "Operating" under Association > Bank Accounts and your previous operating account as "Old Operating". You can do this on the day prior to transition, and it is recommended to get those switched as quickly as possible after transition date.
• Update bank accounts in any applicable 3rd parties (ie Paylease/Zego, Strongroom). Contact your 3rd party provider and let them know that you are transitioning banks, and need to update your current information.
• If management company bank account is changing, update the credentials under your management company service provider > payment method to ensure any ACH payments to your company go to the correct account.
• Update any recurring transfers to reflect the new bank accounts. This can be done under Accounting > Transfer Funds > Recurring Transfers.
• Open unpaid invoices, any invoice that is has been coded but not paid will still have the previous main operating account coded to it. The best practice would be to either keep money in the previous operating accounts until all open invoices are paid or make sure all open invoices are paid before switching the main operating accounts.

Post Transition

• Confirm receipt of first lockbox.
• Confirm integration is active (bank balances, bank transactions, bank statements).
• Confirm auto-reconciliation. If experiencing any issues with transactions not auto-reconciling, contact support@vantaca.com for assistance.