Introducing UVAFinance: Tina Brice and Tim Lingo

What do you do as an Accounts Payable Payment Specialist?

I do the settlement run to pay UVA's vendors.  When I say settlement run it means the process of where WD pulls in all payments that are ready to be paid out based on the criteria set up in the system. That includes running reports that show rejections and corrections and getting those taken care of beforehand so we can get them into the settlement run.  We do a settlement run each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; but there are times we must run them every day. Paying our vendors is an important process, but there are a lot of reasons things can go wrong, such as issues with purchase orders, wrong addresses on file to send checks, and so on -- but in our vendors' minds, they provided the goods and services, and they need to be paid. 

I process the Stop payment forms, the returned checks that come back with bad addresses that have been sent out to our vendors, etc. This is where the customer service part of my job comes in.  I help people with all the various questions we get about payments or questions in general.

Who do you work with on a regular basis? 

Student Financial Services, Payroll, Financial Reporting & Operations, Financial Planning & Analysis, and of course, all of our customers in the schools and units across the University.  I've been here for a long time, so people call me for lots of things, although not as much now that we have Workday and Salesforce.  I think of how folks relied on Joyce Dunn when she was here, and I don't mind being a resource for my colleagues. 

What seasons are busiest for you, or what rhythms exist in your job? 

There are our weekly settlement runs, but also when students come back on Grounds, we do special payment runs for them.  We've been doing runs for students every day for the last two weeks.  We also get busy at the end of the calendar year, because even though UVA closes in July, other companies close in December, and they want to close their books out.  And then of course May picks up for us because everyone is trying to get things in for the closing in June. 

What might surprise people about the work you do? 

Only two people are responsible for processing the settlement run for the University on the academic side: Shelly Winston-Bowers and myself.

What do you like best about working in UVAFinance?

I like the customer service and the accountability we have as a university.  We want to do what's right for the people we serve; we want them to be happy, and we want to be happy!

How do you connect your work with the UVAFinance Values? 

Accountability and collaboration and just making myself available.  I try to help people as much as possible and get them the resources and help they need, even if I have to pass them on to someone else.  I had a great example of that in Joyce Dunn; she was like a beacon of helpfulness and I want to be like that, too.

While all contracts allow the university to operate, “operational”, in our context, excludes procurements, sponsored agreements, and agreements directly related to academic program services. Some of the broader areas of operational contracts that come through Finance are real estate leases and facility use agreements, intellectual property licenses, loan agreements for art and artifacts, service agreements, and affiliation agreements that allow students to get practical experience outside the classroom.

  That varies by the type of agreement. Real estate leases are pretty evenly distributed throughout the year, whereas student placement agreements are most frequent around the beginning of a semester. Art loans happen in clusters where many works are borrowed in anticipation of, but rarely during, an exhibition.Working with people. Contracts, in and of themselves, can be as dull as dishwater but become interesting when viewed as a model of something people are attempting to do to achieve a shared objective. In that context, the contract is a map of the project, and part of my job is to see that the map is complete and ­scaled with enough detail to be useful to the parties, without unneeded length or complexity.Being a collaborative partner is front and center for me because I deal with contracts. Contracts are collaborative by nature. So, everything I do with contracts supports a collaborative endeavor between people. An appropriate contract, by clarifying its subject endeavor, supports a successful relationship between its parties.