Paying More With Less
by Kristie Dunne

Financial Management, like the UW, is a large and diverse organization. On any given day, there are more than 200 people working hard to fulfill the mission and goals of the division. Reading Directions and looking at departmental dashboards gives us a peek into the improvements and accomplishments of other groups. But often, the articles and measurements leave us wanting more. What exactly is an RST? Or a CTI? How do we all work together to support the university? What you are about to read is the first in an ongoing series of “Fin Man 101” articles on a specific department within Financial Management. These feature articles will provide background and context on the department being discussed and will give the reader a better appreciation of any future improvements the department may undertake. This quarter, we invite you to get to know Payables Operations.”

Do you need to get something paid or your accounting question answered? Payables Administration (PA) can do it! The one thing PA strives for is to improve our processes where we can. The Rapid Improvement Process Team set up manual processing as a team. The new process introduced ownership of the entire process from start to finish as opposed to the old way of just specializing in one part of the process. The result was tremendous and it has improved the time it takes to process a manual order. Currently, manual payments with a purchase order are processed within 6 days of receipt in PA. We are in the process of converting the payment of our express mail to the Procurement Card. It is streamlining processing time, decreasing research we do and improving customer service with departments and vendors. In the past years, it has been necessary to work overtime to accomplish all of our year-end processing. Process Improvement has enabled us to complete the year-end processing without having to do any overtime in the 99-01 biennium and the current biennium.

The Imaging System is the new, paperless method of scanning invoices after they are processed. Once the invoice and the batch cover sheet (recap) are scanned there will be no paper files. It will save us time and manpower because the paperless image will be accessible to us on our desktop which will eliminate our need to have to retrieve current documents from storage. Even though the number of invoices has increased 41% since 1990 the number of staff has decreased from 65% to 47% (a reduction of 26%). The average processing time for invoices was 40 days in 1990, but in 2002 the average was only 22 days! Journal vouchers, field advances, and petty cash reimbursements are processed within 5 days.

Accounting Operations and Accounts Payable have joined forces to become PA led by director, Karen Long. CeCe Redila is the Accounting Supervisor of downstairs PA, the former Accounting Operations office. Pramilla Chand is the Assistant Director in upstairs PA, the former Accounts Payable office.

Downstairs PA	Upstairs PA
• Manual Invoices • Check Processing & Vendor Control • NRA/1099 • Petty Cash/Journal Vouchers	• Administrative Services • Invoice Processing • Customer Service

The manual processing group processes all manual orders, reimbursement to individuals, honorariums, blanket spreadsheets, foreign vendor invoices, and wire transfers. Check Processing handles everything pertaining to checks e.g., cancellations and reissues of checks, stop payments, special ‘hand-typed’ checks, returned checks and checks needing to be remailed. In the Vendor Control area, information about vendors is processed and entered online so invoices can be paid. The tax accountant handles all paperwork relating to non-resident aliens (NRA) and tax form 1099.

Mail is received and invoices are logged into our document logging module by our Administrative Services Team. If there are any problems with the invoice delaying payment they are resolved by this team. Invoices are processed by date order and type of invoice by our Invoice Processing Team. In addition to processing online invoices and credit memos, they also increase encumbrances, liquidate balances and close orders. Customer Inquiry is the customer service area of Accounts Payable. This area helps customers in person and on the phone to resolve inquiries, reconcile statements, change budget numbers, educational outreach and lead functions.

Payables Administration has a great organization chart which can be accessed by clicking here.

With our continual process improvement and the encouragement we receive from our leaders, we are living our vision. Yes, Payables Administration can do it! We are doing it – one transaction at a time, one day at a time.