American United Federal Credit Union has automated document processing through software company Laserfiche. 

The $375 million credit union uses Laserfiche to automate the input of documents, including loan applications, new member cards, internal documents and loan documents, Matthew Tingey, senior applications specialist at the credit union, told Bank Automation News. American United FCU has used Laserfiche, which started as “a glorified electronic filing cabinet,” for more than 20 years, he said.

“I was finding myself getting very irritated with repetitive tasks,” Tingey said. “So I started looking into whether there was any way with Laserfiche to batch process things, and what that led me to was learning about Laserfiche Workflow.” 

The Laserfiche Workflow automation tool processes “hundreds of documents” daily for the credit union, Tingey said. Laserfiche Workflow and its member document importer grab documents based on a few metadata fields that credit union employees fill in. Based on the document and the data, the tool inputs the information, identifies the document with a naming convention and files the data in the proper location. 

Using Laserfiche Workflow, the credit union has saved up to 25 hours of staff processing time per month and up to 8,000 employee hours overall, a credit union spokesperson told BAN. 

Eliminating human error 

The Workflow platform also connects with the credit union’s account system to monitor for errors prior to batch processing, Tingey said. 

For example, if a member account number on a document does not match the member’s name, this would trigger employee intervention check for accuracy, he said. “That’s huge for making sure we don’t lose documents [if a typo is made] on an account number.” 

On a slow day, the credit union inputs 400 to 500 documents, so automating with Laserfiche assures documents are named consistently for streamlined filing and ease of finding them in the system, he said. 

Laserfiche also provides the technology for Cerritos, Calif.-based First Choice Bank with an asset size of 2.5 billion, Huron, S.D.-based Dakotaland Federal Credit Union with $607 million in assets and Burley, Idaho-based D.L. Evans Bank with $3 billion in asset size, according to the Laserfiche website. 

At D.L. Evans Bank, Laserfiche saves the bank $1 million annually, IT Director of the bank Gerardo Munoz, according to the Laserfiche website.