Assistant Accountant - College of Creative Arts and Media, Business Office - West Virginia University

Description

The Business Office in the College of Creative Arts and Media at West Virginia University is currently accepting applications for an Assistant Accountant.

About the Opportunity

This position provides complex, independent, professional financial and administrative responsibility in the day-to-day operations of the College of Creative Arts business office. This position has primary responsibility for the effective coordination and management of payroll functions for the college including the Dean’s Office, Schools, and Art Museum. This position is responsible for independently managing and overseeing a variety of day-to-day financial, operational, and administrative functions within the college. This position reports to the Chief Business Officer and works in partnership with other business office personnel to provide fiscal management, operational excellence and exemplary customer service to all stakeholders within and outside of the college. This position has an essential central role in forging the success of the day-to-day operational transition to the newly merged College of Creative Arts and Media, collaborating with the Chief Business Officer on new procedures and policies, and taking responsibility to develop new workflows and processes over a number of different operational areas within the new college.

We strongly believe in work-life balance and keeping time for things we love outside our work. WVU offers generous benefits, including:

• 37.5-hour work week 

• 13 paid holidays (staff holiday calendar)

• 15 annual leave (vacation) days per year (employee leave)

• 18 sick days per year (for when you’re ill, for when you need time to care for sick family, for your own, or your family’s, regularly scheduled medical appointments. Who is family for the purpose of this leave? A lot of people in your life including immediate relatives and in-laws as well as others considered to be members of your household living under the same roof)

• WVU offers a range of health insurance and other benefits

• 401(a) retirement savings with 6% employee contribution match, eligibility to continue health insurance, and other retiree perks. Looking for more retirement benefits information? Check out retirement health insurance benefits, retirement income, and FAQ’s.

• Wellness programs

What You'll Do

PAYROLL FUNCTIONS

• As the primary administrator of payroll functions for the college, which (post-merger) will include a large Dean’s office, four schools and the WVU Art Museum, this position independently coordinates and manages payroll activity for all college level positions including faculty, staff, graduate assistant, student, adjunct, and temporary employees.
• Initiates collaboration with School directors and other departmental leaders on a semester basis to advise them on the status of their labor planning for the upcoming semester. This includes making directors and leaders aware of potential staffing issues and challenges prior to occurrence and discerning and advising an appropriate solution to ensure that school and college goals are achieved; and university, state and federal guidelines are met.  Serve as primary point of contact to all school directors, supervisors, and liaisons regarding information and inquiries regarding payroll and payroll issues.
• Serves as primary liaison between the College and HR, Payroll, SSC Time Collection, EDM, Sponsored Projects, Revenue Services, and other units as they pertain to payroll and staffing matters. Interprets issues presented at the university level to Dean, directors, and other college leaders and determines best course of action to resolve payroll and staffing issues.
• Independently performs regular audits of payroll and other employment audit reports and determines appropriate course of action for correction of errors including, but not limited to, non-contract employees, vacant positions, missing supervisors, incorrect funding, etc.  
• Prepare, process and submit all manner of payroll functions including, but not limited to payroll requests, PR Edit, schedule line changes, terminations, retirements, contracts, new hire forms, adjunct hiring and placement on non-contract, labor distribution adjustments, and element entries for supplement, one-time and other special pays.
• Prepares fiscal and semester payroll reports and advises CBO, Dean, Directors, and supervisors on course of action. Creates, interprets, implements and monitors policies and procedures for payroll at the college, university, state and federal levels.
• Provides a high level of confidentiality and discretion with regard to all manner of payroll, personnel and financial matters.
• Reviews, submits and verifies new offer contracts to ensure accuracy and correct distribution of payroll, benefits, FTE and contract dates. Corrects as needed. Processes and submits assignment information forms for faculty and staff, graduate students, temps and adjuncts. Ensure that payroll has all necessary forms for new faculty hires.
• Creates and submits courtesy assignments for retired faculty and others to access WVU privileges as needed. 
• Conducts a bi-weekly reconciliation of the PR Edit and college suspense report to identify and remedy payroll errors and funding changes as necessary.
• Calculates and processes appropriate course buy out and faculty incentive amounts as needed and reviews with CBO prior to submission each semester.
• Maintain a thorough knowledge of all WVU and college policies and procedures related to WVU faculty summer pay regulations and procedures. Ensure that summer pay from grant funding is correctly submitted and verified for adherence to grant stipulations.
• Oversees and corrects timecard submissions and approval of leave in Applaud for the college. Notify supervisors when timecards are in error status for correction or for justification of short and/or excessive clocked hours per pay cycle. Adheres to university, state and federal guidelines regarding payroll, general accounting standards, and student employment and timekeeping policies. 
• Monitors federal work study students to ensure that their award is not overspent. Work with supervisor to facilitate NRA employees to ensure federal, state and institutional regulations are being followed regarding the number of hours worked and visa requirements. Notify payroll of NRA H-1-B terminations. 

ADMINISTRATIVE DUTIES

• Independently develops workflows and processes in preparation for the merger to form the College of Creative Arts and Media. These workflows require extreme attention to detail, an ability to perform work independently without constant supervision, as well as a broad understanding of the strategic mission of the merged college in conjunction with the overall scope of work in the business office. This position will work with all college personnel through the merger to provide training, information and assistance on a wide variety of new and expanded processes, policies and procedures to ensure that the transition to the newly merged college is successful.
• In many cases the development and initiation of workflows, policy and procedure will be ongoing as they will be revised and updated throughout the first year/years of the merger. These include but are not limited to: 
  
  • developing new workflows for submission of cash and cash handling, deposits, deposit location, cash handling;
  • ensuring that all college personnel are transitioned to the new chart of accounts as it pertains to them,  
  • initiate the process for all personnel to be trained and/or provided information on any number of new administrative processes emanating from the business office such as:  telephone billing updates/TID, establish new administrative vanity email, update college addresses and PO boxes, work locations, Touchnet Marketplace updates, WVU ID card updates, N Drive folder updates, new postage codes, deposit locations and revenue stamps, etc. 
• Serves as first point of contact for people coming to the business office. Provides exemplary customer service to faculty, staff, students, visitors, and guests.
• In some cases, directly supervises student workers in the business office, in all cases works as a lead with office student workers and supervises individual tasks assigned to student workers as needed as well as providing training and follow up on routine office tasks. 
• Attends user group meetings, staff meetings, and other special topic meetings representing the business office to obtain new information on operational procedures and policies. Disseminates information from meetings to staff.
• Creates and submits facilities and ITS work orders as needed to maintain proper working order of all business office equipment and facilities, as well as responding to requests outside of the business office for facilities service. 
• Assists and completes special projects assigned by the Chief Business Officer and provides back-up as needed. 
• Works in partnership with the Office Administrator to ensure the smooth running of the business office and the timely response to requests, inquiries, and tasks.

FINANCIAL DUTIES

• Develops and implements efficient and effective workflow for the college and advise CBO, Dean and other stakeholders to ensure that business office operations are conducted accurately and efficiently, maintaining budget expectations, and anticipating potential issues. Problem solves as needed to ensure preventable issues do not occur or are rectified immediately.
• Manage and execute, on a monthly basis, the reconciliation of Dept RSA scholarships with invoicing and fund receipt from the Foundation (for college managed scholarships). Ensures that scholarship awards are applied to the proper funding and consults with CBO, Dean and Directors the balance of scholarship funding available for awards. 
• Initiates the process to coordinate with faculty and administration to hire and staff all summer camps (approximately ten per summer), ensuring that personnel are processed and ready to begin on time and paid accordingly. Initiate and process background checks for camp personnel. Consult with camp leadership on the financial budget of camps to ensure that budget expectations are being met. 
• Work with faculty who are using the Touchnet Marketplace to establish ecommerce stores for various registrations and other product sales (such as camp registrations, and other registrations. Provide support in setting up storefront and maintaining product database as needed.
• Process gift and revenue deposits, create miscellaneous receipts, scan checks, code MR with GL/POETA funding and submit liquid files to Revenue Services. Take deposits to bank.
• Verify that proper cash handling and funds handling procedures are being followed in the business office and by those handling cash in the college. Provide training as needed for proper cash  and funds handling.
• Prepares and submits other financial and operational reports as requested by CBO and helps determine best practices for efficient and effective operation of the business office.
• Completes other duties as assigned.

Pay Grade: 15

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree.
• A minimum of two (2) years of experience involving:
  
  • Experience with payroll systems
  • Automated accounting and business systems such as Oracle
• A minimum of one (1) year of experience involving:
  • Progressive, related work experience in a business office setting
  • General accounting experience
• Any equivalent combination of related education and/or experience will be considered.
• All qualifications must be met by the time of employment.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

• Good financial management knowledge.
• Proven leadership skills.
• Knowledge of generally accepted accounting principles and procedures, regulations and general business practices. 
• Comprehensive working knowledge of WVU, state and federal payroll procedures and guidelines.
• Demonstrated attention to detail and ability to produce accurate, clear and concise written and data reports.
• Demonstrated ability to multi-task and complete assigned duties accurately within deadline.
• Demonstrated excellent oral and written communication skills necessary to explain complex guidelines to individuals and be able to justify recommendations. 
• Demonstrated ability to provide exemplary customer service to all level of stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to work with and maintain confidential materials and information.