(Remote) Financial Transactions Manager - Shared Services Center

The Shared Services Center at West Virginia University is currently accepting applications for a Financial Transactions Manager.

About the Opportunity

This individual supervises the Financial Transactions support team in the WVU Shared Services Center (SSC). This team provides institutional support in the areas of accounts payable, purchasing, and financial transaction approvals. These activities are handled in the SSC, but they support the operational needs of WVU units. Accurate an updated purchasing and spending approvals is critical to WVU leadership in making decisions in a timely manner and is often needed quickly. This individual provides deep functional expertise in the above-mentioned areas to ensure operations processes and related systems are fully optimized. Frequently engages with the Division of Finance departments, Procurement and Payment Services, financial managers in colleges, schools, and other units across campus and other teams in the SSC. Manages cross functional projects and other initiatives. Provides mentoring, day-to-day guidance and performance management for support staff within the unit. Maintains appropriate staffing levels and ensures all service and quality levels are achieved.

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)
• 24 annual leave (vacation) days per year or more based on years of service (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

• Supervises, motivates, and evaluates the day-to-day performance of a large team.
  
• Ensures adherence to all purchasing, payment, and procurement policies and procedures. Works with the team to understand general accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and applies this understanding to purchasing and payment support activities. Supports the team in the understanding and enforcing procurement, purchasing, payment and travel requirements at WVU.
  
• Provides day to day guidance to staff and serves as the “go to” resource for questions and concerns.
  
• Provides day to day coaching and mentoring to staff. Monitors cases and gives ongoing continuous feedback to ensure individual and team service targets are met or exceeded.
  
• Manages issue escalations. Provides guidance to staff and handles escalated issues directly, as appropriate. Identifies opportunities to provide corrective services to address customer complaints.
  
• Monitors individual and team performance continuously. Provides coaching and timely feedback to staff. Creates and implements development plans for each staff member. Seeks growth opportunities for high performers. Recognizes and shows appreciation for team member efforts. Ensures individual and team service targets are met or exceeded.
  
• Supports and contributes to the SSC Financial Management team operational goals.
  
• Maximizes workflow and productivity.
  
• Ensures complex employee, manager or business scenarios are analyzed and effective processing steps taken to ensure resolution within financial management process guidelines.
• Frequently engages with Division of Finance teams, Procurement and Payment Services teams, strategic financial managers in schools and other units, teams within the SSC and others to ensure complex scenarios are resolved and processed timely and accurately.
  
• Resolves questions about purchasing and payment support activities through timely responses to all supported units.
  
• Works with Operational Excellence and Customer Care teams to identify and resolve any delay in case responses.
  
• Provides Tier 2 inquiry support to employees regarding financial transaction support policies, plans and processes. These guidelines will be created through the Division of Finance or the WVU Procurement and Payments Services unit.
  
• Effectively uses case management and knowledgebase tools to resolve, log, track and escalate employee inquiries.
  
• Maintains a high level of confidentiality and professionalism.
  
• Completes and maintains currency on all required training on all applicable WVU policies, programs, processes and procedures.
  
• Maintains established service levels for handling calls, emails, and transactions. Strives to exceed service goals.
  
• Understands and promotes the link between the Division of Finance units, Procurement and Payment Services and financial managers in the colleges, schools and other units’ team to ensure service goals are achieved.
  
• Models a “change champion” role for the team. Can clearly articulate the benefits of new or revised financial management processes to employees and develops plans to implement those changes with the team.
  
• Identifies opportunities to improve financial management processes with a focus on purchasing and payment support. This includes evaluating process efficiencies and making improvement suggestions based on lean processing principles or to comply with Division of
• Finance, Procurement and Payment Services, and other unit policy changes.
  
• Actively monitors and uses metrics and trends to determine where process improvement options exist to improve the customer experience, optimize services and gain efficiencies through technology or other means incorporating these in process improvement proposals.
  
• Ensures process documentation is updated and teams receive adequate training on changes.
  
• Stays informed on financial policy, plans and programs as well as regulatory updates for their areas of expertise providing regular team updates.
  
• Works closely with the Assistant Director, Financial Management on special projects.
  
• Serves as a subject matter expert on financial processing for project teams.
  
• Ensures project activities are planned and prioritized appropriately balancing project and ongoing support needs with project leaders, cross functionally as needed.
  
• As a subject matter expert influences project decisions where appropriate to improve the customer experience and/or improve efficiency.
  
• Ensures project deliverables are delivered on time, are documented, and teams are effectively trained in process and functionality changes.
  
• Works collaboratively with other SSC teams to achieve goals.

• Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education and experience that provides the necessary depth of knowledge and skills to successfully perform the duties and responsibilities may be considered. A degree in business or management is preferred.
• A minimum of five (5) years of combined experience in the following:
  • Progressively responsible experience within accounting, finance or related field
  • Work experience in a complex university/college/private entity business, accounting or finance department is preferred
  • Project management experience
  • Experience with advanced financial systems software
  • Experience in communicating to multiple levels of a complex organization
  • Prior experience supervising staff
• Demonstrated ability to lead a team through prior project team leadership and/or supervisory experience. Ability to inspire teamwork and collaboration across functional areas of the financial management team.
• Ability to exercise appropriate judgement to resolve staffing and performance issues and determine the appropriate course of action to resolve a customer issue.
• Possesses strong customer service and communication skills typically acquired through prior work in a customer service setting.
• Demonstrated ability to research and apply critical thinking skills to resolve complex issues related to purchasing and accounts payable.
• Ability to develop and maintain effective work relationships with other members of the SSC Financial Management team and members of other WVU units,
• Ability to identify and address areas of continuous improvement.
• Effective organizational skills.
• Demonstrated experience in the use of Microsoft Office Professional software, especially Word, Excel, Access, Power Point) and Visio.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.

At West Virginia University, we leverage our talents and resources to create a better future for our state and the world. As West Virginia's land-grant university, WVU has three campuses that touch each corner of the state. The WVU System includes 518 buildings on 15,880 acres, Extension Service offices in all 55 counties, ten experimental farms and four forests.

From the groundbreaking R1 research of our flagship campus in Morgantown to the career-oriented programs of WVU Potomac State in Keyser to the technology-intensive programs at WVU Tech in Beckley — the contributions of WVU employees directly impact the 1.8 million people of West Virginia every day, no matter their role or position.

Service, curiosity, respect, accountability, and appreciation are the core values that unite Mountaineers, inspiring one another to work tirelessly and support others as they seek to reach new heights. After all, when you're a Mountaineer, impossible is just another mountain to climb.

Creating an inclusive, engaged, and dynamic learning environment is core to WVU’s academic mission. We welcome candidates who can contribute a range of ideas, approaches and experiences.

West Virginia University is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer and is the recipient of an NSF ADVANCE award for gender equity. The University values diversity among its faculty, staff, and students, and invites applications from all qualified applicants regardless of race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, nationality, genetics, disability, or Veteran status.