For the 2025 dividend payout, BACH did something we’ve never done before: we trialed ACH payments to send distributions directly to our members’ bank accounts. After years of relying on traditional check-based payouts, moving to ACH is one of the biggest operational upgrades we’ve made to how BACH pays the people who make this business possible.
And we’re happy to say it was a success.
Why We Made the Switch
Checks have served us fine over the years, but they come with real friction — for us and for our members. Printing, mailing, waiting on delivery, waiting on deposits to clear, reissuing lost or stale checks — all of it adds time and uncertainty to a moment that should feel simple: getting paid.
ACH payments solve that. Funds move directly and securely from BACH’s accounts into each member’s bank account, with no envelope, no trip to the bank, and none of the lag that comes with paper. For a fund managing distributions across dozens of properties and members, that efficiency compounds quickly.
What Went Well
The overwhelming majority of the 2025 payout ran exactly as planned. Members who provided their banking details saw their dividends land directly in their accounts, on schedule, without the wait that a mailed check requires. The feedback we’ve heard so far has been positive — people appreciate not having to think about it.
The Lumps and Bumps — and Why We Expected Them
We’d be doing our members a disservice if we pretended this was flawless out of the gate. Any time you roll out a new payment system for the first time, there are going to be a few hiccups: a handful of accounts needing verification, a few payments that took an extra day to route correctly, some initial back-and-forth collecting updated banking information. None of it was a surprise, and none of it was a significant setback — it’s exactly the kind of thing you expect and plan for when you introduce a new process at this scale.
What matters is that our team caught these issues quickly, resolved them directly with the affected members, and used what we learned to tighten the process for next time.
Looking Ahead to 2026
We’re genuinely excited to run ACH payments again for the 2026 payout — this time with a full year’s worth of lessons learned already built in. The ability to get money into our members’ hands faster, more reliably, and with less manual overhead is exactly the kind of advancement we want to keep investing in.
This kind of change doesn’t happen without the accounting foundation underneath it. Knowing exactly what’s owed to each members, down to the dollar, is only possible because of the disciplined monthly accounting that runs behind the scenes at BACH all year long. ACH payments are the visible upgrade; clean books are what make it trustworthy.
Next up: we’re building something that will make tracking these payouts even easier for members — a dedicated BACH members app.
