Thursday, February 21, 2002 • Vol 8, Issue 4
The ‘big challenge’ of financial paperwork
‘I like to see how much I can do and how much I can get caught up on,’ says Accounts Payable’s Athena Wilson
By BRAD BROBERG
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Photo by Clay Eals
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| Athena Wilson (right), accounting specialist in Accounts Payable, counsels Quynh Nguyen, new assistant in Grants and Contracts, about the processing of invoices. |
Athena Wilson gets a lot of bills, and she can't wait to pay them.
"I love what I do," she said.
Wilson is an accounting specialist in the Accounts Payable Department at the Hutch, where invoices for virtually every penny the Center spends on operating expenses other than payroll - up to $3 million a week - are received, recorded and readied for payment.
"It's a very important job," said Brenda Isaacs, manager of Accounts Payable. "It affects the Center's bottom line. Everything we do ends up on the financial statements."
Wilson doesn't handle all of the bills, but she shoulders a healthy share. She's responsible for vendors starting with the letters F through L and R through T - plus all of the Center's air travel.
'Funky' travel bills
"Reconciling the air travel bills is challenging," Isaacs said. "There are a lot of little funky things about them that Athena has to follow up on before they can be paid. She works hard to coordinate all of the people involved in that."
Each day that Wilson works - her schedule consists of three 10-hour shifts - she attacks a stack of invoices piled 50 or more high. After she's whittled that stack to zero, awaiting her is a drawer full of "agings," unprocessed invoices with holes to be filled.
It's a never-ending stream of paperwork, but Wilson keeps her head above water by taking things one day at a time.
"I like coming to work and seeing what's on my desk and knowing what I have to do that day," Wilson said. "To me, it's like a big challenge. I like to see how much I can do and how much I can get caught up on."
While the job- open the invoice, enter the data, open the invoice, enter the data - may seem routine, Wilson said it's not.
"Every invoice is totally different," she said. "There are so many variables to what we have to do."
The goal is for bills to be paid within 30 days of their arrival, Wilson said. If an invoice arrives in proper order, Wilson can start the ball rolling in a flash, entering the bill into the computer system in less than five minutes.
Of course, it's not always that easy. Every invoice is a minefield of potential mistakes that can put payments on hold until the oversights are corrected, especially when invoices lack purchase orders.
If a purchase order exists, accounting assistants can find all the information necessary to enter the invoice and begin the payment process.
Authorized signers
If not, accounting assistants must obtain a signature from an authorized signer on the Hutch program that incurred the expense. They also need to know into which budget, and budget category, the expense falls.
If Wilson could spread one message, it would be to remind people that only authorized signers - who are designated by the program heads - can sign invoices and that all invoices must indicate a budget and a category.
Isaacs said it takes patience, attention to detail and strong communication skills to deal with those and other cases of missing information.
"You have to know what type of attitude and communication works with different people," Isaacs said. "It can vary greatly, whether you're working with a scientist, administrative assistant or a vendor."
Customer-service attitude
Wilson excels in all cases, Isaacs said.
"Athena has a good customer-service attitude," she said. "She's able to please everybody and get the job done. She's very professional. Sometimes people want to take a sideways approach to solving a problem, but she always makes sure to follow Center policies and procedures."
Wilson has worked at the Center for eight years.
"I had seen the sign for Fred Hutch up on First Hill for years and years, but I never thought I'd be working here," she said. "I didn't realize how big it was."
Wilson briefly left the Center two years ago for a job closer to her Kent home but returned after only six months.
"I like our flexible hours, and I have such a great boss," she said.
