There are a couple of access points: Launch Tool #14 Member Personal Banker and select the Online banking/ARU (activate, change PIN/password; view password history) option OR Launch Tool #72 Update ARU/Online Banking Access (PIN) (Shortcut: PIN) It's Me 247 CU*TALK CUTalk

Yes. The CU*BASE Budget tool is designed to set the base budget by using the historical record-keeping features of its General Ledger. Through the comparison of historical budgets and actual financial activity, CU*BASE can project a detailed budget in a single pass. Once your Budget is created, you can then use the Finanical Report Configuration to bring in your budget totals to perform your analysis.

The CU*BASE Budget tools are not intended to project your entire balance sheet. While some software products do that, that was never our intent. Our purpose in modeling select assets and liabilities is to create a projection to be used to calculate the income and expense for the budget. It results in a few simple things: You can create reports to present how you see member balances growing in the future. You can create reports to present the actual member balance in comparison to your project  More...

Yes. As long as you’ve set up your Budget Groups carefully, the modeling steps (Steps 5-8) can be done before, after, or simultaneously with the classical budgeting steps (Steps 9-10). Use your Budget Groups to help you stay organized and keep careful track of which G/Ls are being worked in each step. You’ll also need to coordinate any adjustments to your Budget Controls to make sure the proper G/L types are opened or closed at the appropriate times.

Yes, this is possible in most cases, at least for the monthly balances that are used by most budgeting tools and trending dashboards. Since importing detailed history of debits and credits to G/L accounts might not be possible, keep in mind that functionality may still be limited for some tools. Contact Keegan Daniel, VP Professional Services, at kdaniel@cuanswers.com to discuss your options for either flooding data into your database or manually entering data that could be used by the budget to  More...

When it comes to filling in your budget worksheet, it’s important to understand the distinction between the classical budgeting calculation (% increase or decrease based on previous year figures), versus how the modeling projections are determined: With the classical budgeting tools, CU*BASE calculates individual branch G/L figures, one month at a time, using previous year data, then shows you the total of those figures on the screen – it does not figure a total then spread it among   More...

Yes. We call that the “classical” budgeting method and you can do this without using any of the modeling tools if you like. You’ll still need to do steps 1 2 to configure your chart of accounts, then proceed directly to step 9 and budget all of your income and expenses using the same technique, using as many passes as needed for different calculation parameters.

You can use a third party tool to work your asset and liability projects and the associated income and expenses. Just remember that you can only upload the income and expense figures into your budget. The upload tool does not support uploading resulting balances for asset and liability G/Ls.

There are two methods used to track delinquent loans for reporting purposes in CU*BASE: Method One (for Collections tracking) We have always tracked delinquency in two separate fields for “Months” and ‘Days” in the member files. When a loan is 30 days delinquent, it shows as “0 Months, 30 Days” delinquent. When a loan is 31 days delinquent, it is “1 Month, 0 Days” delinquent. A month is always considered 30 days regardless of the actual number o  More...

Yes. There is an Amortization Default option available in each of your Loan Product Code configurations which allows credit unions to default amortization criteria such as: Delinquency Fine Code, Rate, Payment Frequency, # of Payments etc. The system will then default this value into the applicable fields when creating a new loan request. These defaults are intended to provide consistency for all new loan requests, but can be changed/edited during the loan request process if necessary.

​ For General Support and CU*BASE Assistance: Use the AnswerBook to submit a question to the Client Services and Education team. You can access the AnswerBook via a CU*BASE session by selecting the @ symbol and asking a question, or by logging in and asking a question. You can also call 616-285-5711 or 800-327-3478 and follow the menu prompts to reach a representative. For Technical Support: Use the ConnectWise ticketing system to submit a question to the Network Services team. ConnectWise   More...

There are two primary reasons we charge this fee: Our belief that we should do our best to keep our fees down when credit unions do not earn. This is why, for example, It's Me 247 mobile web is offered free to our credit unions. It's also behind our constant pressure to reduce fees where CUs have no basis or belief they can charge for a defensive, relationship service. Charging for these services in this manner fund other areas where the direct expenses cannot easily be identified wi  More...

These files should automatically be placed into the correct spots to ensure that Iaccess continues to work without any problems. If you want to verify that you have received this file you can follow these few steps: Open My computer Navigate to c:\users\public\documents\ibm\client access\ Verify the current file size of “cwbssldf.kdb” If this file size is 30kb then everything worked correctly and you don’t have to do anything else. If this file size is different follow steps   More...

As of April 2023, CU*Answers and its cuasterisk.com network partners provide services to 366 credit unions in 42 states, representing 2.72 million members.

Yes, CU*BASE supports risk based lending. CU*BASE provides tools for pricing loans as based upon the Credit Score/ Paper Grade received. A credit union should check with its applicable credit bureau(s) for Decisioning Products available to facilitate this process.

Yes. There is a technique for reviewing and manually adjusting branch allocation calculations for projected asset and liability balances. See the Budgeting with CU*BASE booklet for instructions. NOTE: The classical budgeting tools also contain a “Close a branch” function which zeros out monthly figures from your budget starting with a month you specify. But this does not affect projections for asset and liability balances used in the modeling tools.

No. CU*Talk includes a mechanism to intercept and automatically downsize the balance sizes to the maximum number of digits CU*Talk can handle and reformat the dates from the database before sending it on to CU*Talk to be relayed to the members. Amounts that too large will cause a generic message to be read to the member that the amount is currently not available. Our plan is to address that if and when we start seeing member balances and activity grow to the point that CU*Talk needs to be abl  More...

Trust accounts can be set up as either individual or organizational depending on the legal nature of the trust. Following are recommendations for handling situations when a member wants to set up a membership where the primary member and the first joint owner are, in essence, the same person. This happens most often for trust accounts. Currently in CU*BASE there are two ways to handle trusts: For trusts that use a person’s SSN (where you do not have a separate TIN for the trust), set up th  More...

CU*Answers strives to accommodate our clients by offering training in many different formats, from full classroom offerings (see the current CU*Answers University Catalog) to online learning and web conference sessions. We also offer individual training sessions, and workshops which can be held either at a credit union site, or here at CU*Answers. For credit union staff to train internally, we offer our web-based online courses as well as hands-on learning using a pretend CU*BASE credit union  More...

Of course we are always happy to assist you in explaining system features to your auditors and examiners. We will be glad to talk directly to your examiner to explain not only how the tools and security features work, but also the strategic ideas behind why things work they way they do and the direction in which we are heading. Please contact a CSR or our CEO directly if you need help working with your examiners.

The following applies only to credit unions that have activated the Text-To-Speech (TTS) engine for CU*Talk Audio Response. You can use Tool #506 Member Rate Maintenance to control product rates read to members in CU*Talk Audio Response. But keep in mind that because you are using Text-To-Speech, changes made here directly affect the credit union website and It's Me 247 online banking as well. Once in the menu option, select shares or certificates. From the next rate menu, you will see a   More...

Credit unions have the option to have teller check holds based on business or calendar days. Use Tool #849 Automated Holds Configuration to update how the system calculates holds. If you select to have the system calculate using only business days you must also launch Tool #243 Configure CU Non-Business Days which allows a credit union to indicate what processing days they follow (Sunday through Saturday), to indicate whether the credit union observes all standard Federal holidays, and/or t  More...

The FRB produces six sets of files each business day on weekdays, Monday through Friday, except for Federal Holidays. CU*Answers posts the files as follows: CU*Answers receives the first and sixth set of files overnight and posts them by 8:30 AM ET. As this posting is a combined posting, two Receive reports and one Posting report are produced. CU*Answers receives the second set of files by noon and posts by 1:00 PM ET. Same-day credits must be posted with this file. CU*Answers receives the thir  More...

As of April 2023, CU*Answers has 150 credit union owners in 25 states.

In the teller system, you can configure exactly how check holds should be calculated, including default hold days as well as calculated hold days by check R T or amount. In both teller posting and ATM processing, CU*BASE also allows an Electronic Hold configuration that can be used in conjunction with a Member in Good Standing configuration. Different levels of hold times can be configured based on the 'Member in Good Standing' and also within the Tiered Scoring feature. Using these C  More...