The finance professional serves as a collaborative member of the Arboretum Finance team by providing accounting and payroll support to the MN Landscape Arboretum.  Collectively, the team designs and implements strategies that ensure services provided by the finance team are efficient, cost-effective, consistent, timely and user-centered. This position will serve approximately +250 diverse staff including professional and academic, Civil Service, Teamsters bargaining unit, AFSCME (clerical and technical) bargaining units, students, temp and casuals.  The finance professional provides expert guidance on accounting, payroll, cash management and purchasing.

This position offers flexible work arrangements including hybrid/remote work.

50%  Accounting Financial Specialist

• Oversees all aspects of cash accounting, reporting, reconciliation, compliance and documentation.
• Internal auditing and quality control activities
• Generate financial reports, identify trends and create solutions
• Update monthly financial schedules, including balance sheet accounts
• Reconcile accounts, analyze monthly financial results and investigate and report on variances
• Manage billing process; analyze and update pricing for billable, ensure things are properly billed, compile and analyze
• Prepare and enter journal entries
• Use of various queries; UM analytics, Altru, Database and other tools as necessary to extract data into Excel and then create reports and analysis
• Assist in development and ongoing review of departments financial processes
• Develops and implements a communication plan to share relevant information, policies and procedures with current and new employees.  This includes close collaboration with the accounting team to prepare reports and other materials for supervisors to utilize while making decisions, providing direction, understanding on accounting functions, interpretation and inquiries.
• Calculate, prepare and submit monthly the MN Sales and Use Tax
• Daily point of sale drawer closing and cash/credit card reconciliation

40% Voucher Specialist

• Responsible for developing and implementing a staff training plan for procurement.
• Develops and implements a communication plan to share relevant information, policies, and processes with staff and supervisors.
• Gather appropriate information from employees before making purchases and confirm appropriate chart-strings for each purchase, consulting with colleagues, as needed.
• Manage departmental purchasing and University compliance through blanket orders, purchase orders, Pcard, and a business Amazon account.
• This includes following up with vendors on the status of orders, as appropriate
• Manage departmental reimbursement program including non-employee reimbursements and acting as the Chrome River expert.
• Act as liaison between purchasing and OGC contract bidding, terms & conditions reviews and negotiations.
• Responsible for receiving and reconciling purchases.
• Act as financial assistance to staff on funding, chart string setups, budgeting, and purchases.
• Troubleshooting and resolving voucher processing errors
• Understanding and handling voucher variables such as sales tax, assets, foreign funds and special payments
• Deleting and closing vouchers
• Entry of regular, adjustment, journal and single payment vouchers, pcards or Chrome River
• Audit transactions for policy compliance, availability of funds and use of appropriate chart string
• Prepare journal entries
• Research and problem solve
• Identify and resolve account variance.  Submit corrections via journal or retro distribution.
• Works with supervisors and staff, providing direction on accounting functions, interpretation and inquires
• Expert on setting up or changes to vendors information

10% Payroll

• Act as back-up to Payroll Specialist
• Act as back-up for I-9 Administrator
• Update salary distributions to match budget plans
• Prepare Retro adjustment journal entries
• Answer questions regarding account variances or balances.