I can still remember working my first “year-end closing” at a bank. Among the late nights, the uncertainty flourishing from me helping with it for the first time, and the issues we had with our core system, the thing I remember the most was printing tax forms. It seemed like we had a never-ending supply of forms, which was good because there were hundreds to print out. We’d load them up in a dot matrix printer (yes, I’m old…though in my defense that printer was manufactured when I was in junior high) and would print the forms for what seemed like days.

Fast forward to my first few years here in Bruning; we were now using a laser printer, but Cheryl Houser, myself, and a team of willing volunteers would go to the back room, put on the Jim Croce (try it out if you never heard of him kids), and prep the forms that Bookkeeping had printed for us to send in the mail.

Of course, now that we have outsourced our core to Fiserv, they print and mail the tax forms for us as they have done for the past four years. Here are some helpful reminders for January:

• Please be patient with the mail. Your tax forms should be printed and mailed in the next several days; however we can’t control the Post Office, and how long it will take to get the forms to you. They should arrive no later than February 1^st, please call your local branch if they have not arrived in a timely manner and we would be glad to help and answer your questions.
• If you believe something is incorrect on your tax forms once you receive them, we would be glad to talk with you about that. We pride ourselves on accuracy here at Bruning Bank and with all of our auditing and procedures, we believe there is a very good chance your forms are accurate, but mistakes do happen. If needed, we can make corrections and get you updated forms, so just let us know if you have an issue.
• Unrelated to tax forms, but you may find that you are missing a bank statement or other information from 2017 during your own “year-end closing”. If so, this is the perfect time to setup Online and Mobile banking if you haven’t already. We have the last 18 months of your statements available for you to print right from home or download to a money management software, as well as other information all at your fingertips.

We appreciate your business and hope that together we can have a happy 2018!

Corey Swartzendruber