For many organizations — especially property management firms orthose who frequently use 1031 exchanges — managing escrow accountsis an essential part of their business, although one that islabor-intensive and time-consuming. Historically, every stage inthe escrow process — from opening an account to producing end ofyear tax forms for the IRS — required them to interact with theirbank. To complicate matters, escrow is subject to a confusingcombination of professional standards, state and federalregulations, and IRS reporting requirements, which mean managingescrow accounts requires painstaking attention to detail. Finally,account holders had no real-time visibility into account balancesor activity, depending as they did on monthly statements. And whenthey received their statements, the only way they could determinetheir overall escrow position was to total the individualaccounts.