Careers

Department: Student Finance
Salary/Grade: EXS/8

Job Summary:

Student Finance is responsible for charging, billing, and collecting tuition and fees for all schools and programs at the University (close to $1 billion per academic year), along with providing customer support for 18,000 students and parents on the Evanston and Chicago campuses.  The department also administers the Northwestern Loan program (3800 loans with $115 million receivable), including originating and servicing these loans. Student Finance values excellent customer service and continuous improvement, in support of the educational mission of the University.

The Manager, Accounting leads the team responsible for accounting function within Student Finance.  This includes supervision of staff, reconciliations, customer contact, accounting analysis, and audit requests.  Additionally, the Manager Accounting performs the following:

• Provides accounting expertise to manage and reconcile receivable, revenue and certain expense reporting for student tuition and fees and loan payments.
• Implements existing policy & ensures the effective, compliant, & efficient completion of daily financial activities.
• Follows established procedures for daily cash balancing, revenue accruals, and other accounting transactions.
• Applies industry and professional standards, interprets university policy and procedure, federal and state laws, granting agency guidelines, and other regulations (as applicable).
• Complies with federal guidelines regarding management of student receivables and payment of student loans. 

Specific Responsibilities:

Areas of Responsibility:

• Please highlight areas of responsibility: 
  • Accounting policy & procedure
  • Accounts receivable
  • Analysis
  • Audit
  • Budget
  • Cash receipt
  • Chart &/or account coding
  • Forecasting         
  • Journal &/or ledger
  • Reconciliation
  • Reporting
  • Student accounts
  • Student funding
  • Student loans
  • Transfer charges
  • Wire transfers

Analysis, Statements & Reporting:

• Creates daily, monthly, annual, &/or project end analysis & reports regarding area/unit, grants &/or awards, accounts, funds, payroll, expense &/or revenue allocation, customer service activity, etc.
• Monitors activity with loan servicer, payment vendors, third party payers, to verify that transactions are properly recorded.
• Records journal entries and creates reports.
• Creates month-end transactions to record interest and late fee revenue, and to manage tuition and fees revenue.
• Performs financial account reconciliations, statement analysis, and transaction research.
• Reconciles loans in NU Financials as compared to balances on servicer reports.
• Oversees reconciliations of all student receivables-related accounts.
• Provides support for annual audit workpapers and quarterly financial statement workpapers.
• Maintains, and updates financial models and analysis.

Transactions:

• Provides review and oversight of all types of financial transactions some of which may be complex in regard to size or duration of account.
• Approves entries prepared by Accounting staff.  Prepares entries for accrual transactions.
• Enters individual &/or summary of transactions into journals &/or general ledger or other NU enterprise system.
• Processes/approves accounting adjustments for NU Financials and servicer system.
• Reviews; ensures approval based on alternatives regarding practice & policy; analyzes and classifies transactions in accordance with established chart or coding of accounts; creates new accounts; prepares, processes, reconciles & provides receipts (as appropriate) for transactions.
• Updates spreadsheets used by Accounting staff to complete daily balancing.
• Prepares & delivers bank deposits
• As needed when short staffed.
• Accesses multiple banking systems to process transactions, retrieve information, &/or initiate wire transfers. 
• Provides financial policy interpretation to determine the validity of customer requests & ensure compliance.
• Provides support for internal &/or granting agency audit requests. 
• Reviews status of related university accounts, transactions and processes; troubleshoots issues as needed.

Administration:

• Processes & presents data & information through the application of database, graphic & spreadsheet software.
• Uses excel spreadsheets extensively for payment history analysis, rebook analysis, reconciliation, etc.
• Obtains data by downloading from enterprise systems; develops and runs queries.
• Uses query tools available in servicer system and NU Financials.
• Identifies sources for data & information to be used & completes special financial projects
• Performs general office support activities
• With Associate Director, Operations, determine and write off bad debts in accordance with University policy.
• Administer, monitor and review student payment plan.
• Oversee and resolve problems of any suspense items resulting from interface batches.
• Manages operation of or interaction with a computer system or system processes that support the area or program.
• Reviews servicer reports for accuracy.
• Ensures that area service level goals are met.
• Manages 3 staff performing various accounting activities:  balancing & reconciliation, daily deposit balancing, daily monetary transaction balancing, refund overpayments, paid in full processing.

Supervision:

• Provides work direction to others
• Supervises other employees
• Manages professional development of team members, including ensuring that they have growth opportunities and adequate training and support to manage their workload
• Assists with hiring employees
• Is responsible for hiring permanent and temporary employees in his/her unit and provides input for hiring staff in other units.

Miscellaneous

• Performs other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, Business Administration, Finance or related field; OR 2 years financial administration work experience; OR equivalent combination education and experience where similar knowledge, skills, and abilities may be acquired.
• 2 years of financial, budgeting &/or preparing account reconciliations or financial statements along with financial analysis experience.
• At least 3 year supervisory experience
• At least 1 year experience in higher education administration

Minimum Competencies: (Skills, knowledge, and abilities.)

• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Ability to use multiple software programs (Word, Excel, etc)
• Customer service experience
• Accuracy and attention to detail
• Ability to synthesize and prioritize information and work

Create a Job Alert for Similar Jobs