Controller's Office burden on treasurers

By Joe Dwyer     2/10/11 6:00pm

It's almost changeover season on campus - clubs, organizations and college governments are all getting ready to hold elections or tryouts before handing over the reins to a new group of students. Among these new electees, a fresh batch of treasurers across campus will be inheriting the ledgers and piles of receipts that come with the position. More than likely the majority of the new treasurers will also require training from the Controller's Office to be authorized for form signatures and the use of purchasing cards and the electronic BANNER and TouchNet systems.

For underclassmen unfamiliar with BANNER, prior to 2009 the majority (if not all) of the colleges and clubs on campus used their own separate off-campus bank accounts for all transactions. Rice's finance division, in an effort to increase oversight over expenditures and for the purposes of more accurate financial statements and tax records, mandated that all colleges, clubs and organizations consolidate their off-campus accounts into the Controller's Office's BANNER system. While this move made sense from the purely financial standpoint of the administration, the new demands of BANNER placed a lot of undue burden on the college treasurers who were previously used to the considerable degree of autonomy that came with keeping their own books, mostly because the Controller's Office was largely oblivious to the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the college system, and still is, to some degree.

In other words, the Controller's Office need to get a clue. Fast.

---

---

I'm not saying that the people in the Allen Center and on the 26th floor of the rainbow building are totally ignorant of how colleges and student organizations operate, but if treasurers are going to be expected to set aside time out of their personal schedules to learn the fancy BANNER and TouchNet systems, it's only fair that the Cashier's and Controller's Offices take some time out of their own oh-so-busy work schedules to not only get a solid idea of the kind of timelines that college governments operate on, but to also accommodate those timelines.

What I mean by accommodation would be making more of these training sessions available at more frequent intervals throughout the spring semester. Colleges and clubs don't operate on a perfect fiscal calendar, and changeover dates vary for a number of different reasons, such as selection of O-Week coordinators and advisers, so while some colleges may have their new cabinets set as early as February, some may take as long as the end of March to run elections and complete the transition to the new government. As a result, holding off on handing out purchasing cards and BANNER IDs to treasurers and coordinators until all colleges have completed the changeover process is absurd. It may be less work for the people in charge of running the trainings, but it's an absolute pain in the ass for newly elected treasurers who are immediately expected to take care of transactions but aren't authorized to do so yet.

The fact that I was required to attend a TouchNet deposit training just last week, less than a week before Wiess College elects a new cabinet and four months before I graduate, highlights this disconnect between the Controller's Office and the student treasurers.

In an ideal world, once a student is elected to a treasurer position, they would be able to contact the Controller's Office and set up a session (within the same week, not two weeks or a month later) where they would receive all the necessary paperwork for authorization and access to BANNER, TouchNet, purchasing cards and signature authority, all at the same time. Trash the lengthy and boring PowerPoint presentations that just get skimmed through anyway and just give us a single folder with all the 20-page how-to packets that are normally handed out at these sessions and let us be on our way. Then follow up with, say, monthly meetings between treasurers, the dean of undergraduates and vice president of finance to touch base, ask and answer questions and make sure everything is going OK.

The Cashier's and Controller's Offices need to remember that they are working with students, not people whose only only job is to take care of a department's finances and purchases. We don't get paid to carry out the positions that we run for in college government - we have class and homework and extracurriculars to take care of that don't always match up with the four measly hours that the Cashier's Office is open for business. As such, if the expectation is that treasurers are to play ball Rice's way and learn and abide by BANNER and TouchNet to control their organization's finances, it's only fair to expect that the Cashier's and Controller's Offices give them some measure of added flexibility, or at least be more willing to get on the treasurers' level and regularly communicate and work with them. Remember, we never asked to be switched over to BANNER, and in fact, too much of the burden of "switching" seems to have fallen on the treasurers.

While I'm at it, is too much to ask for a smile whenever I visit the the Cashier's Office to refill my Q-Card?

Joe Dwyer is a Wiess College senior.

---