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<br />~ <br />~~HILLS <br /> <br />MEMORANDUM <br /> <br />DATE: <br /> <br />April 5, 2007 <br /> <br />Item: 7C <br /> <br />TO: Mayor and City Council members <br />Michelle Wolfe, City Administrator <br /> <br />FROM: Sue Iverson, Finance Director <br /> <br />SUBJECT: Update on Finance Department Activities <br /> <br />In an effort to keep you informed, I am will attempt to summarize what my department and I <br />have been doing for the last nine weeks since I have started, <br /> <br />The department had not been running at full staff since last August when the former Finance <br />Director left. The Accounting Analyst also left in late December leaving only Sandy Byl, a part- <br />time Utility Billing Clerk in the department. Pang Silseth, Office Support Staff, stepped in to <br />help with the daily work with roughly one days training. This was a very critical time for the <br />finance department as many reporting deadlines happen between late December and early <br />January. I came on board January 22, 2007. (Sandy and Pang did a tremendous job given what <br />they were dealing with.) <br /> <br />Much of my time has been spent helping Sandy and Pang with the daily work, as the department <br />was still short-staffed due to the vacancy of the Accounting Analyst. I was new to the <br />department and new to the "software" the City used, Sandy and Pang kept very good records of <br />what they had done and what they were not sure of and I researched and made the appropriate <br />correcting entries. I also helped Pang file all of the required reports for year end like W2' s , <br />1099's, Sales and Use Tax and other year-end reports required by the State and Federal <br />government. I also filed any reports to the State Auditor that had not been filed in regards to the <br />budget and levy for 2007, <br /> <br />One of the problems areas has been in coding invoices. Previously the former Accounting <br />Analyst had coded the invoices and gave them to the appropriate persons for approval, the <br />department directors are now coding their own invoices, but the budget in its current format is <br />very confusing, I then spent time and reformatted a file with all the budget information in an <br />easily read format that helped simplify this process, Another problem is that the City <br />restructured its chart of accounts and some of the codes have been reused to identify different <br />items than previous identified which creates problems as people tend to look at last years or <br />