UNIVERSITY OF WEST GEORGIA

ANNUAL REPORT

Fiscal Year 2008 (July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008)

DEPARTMENT OF

Office of the Controller

Name of Department Head

Richard Sears

Name of Person Completing Report

Richard Sears/Tamara Lane

1*

Departmental Mission/Vision Statement (url only, required)

http://www.westga.edu/bursar/

2*

Departmental Statement of Goals, Process to Assess These Goals, and Assessment Results (url only, required)

http://www.bf.westga.edu/EffectEval/Assessments/Controller.asp  

3*

Give an Example of How your Department Used the Assessment of Goals and Outcomes to Change/Improve a Process (required)

Goal:  Pursue a departmental name change from Student Financial Services to Bursars Office.  The change of the name from Student Financial Services to the Bursar’s Office was successfully changed in July 2007.

Goal:  Create an informational guide for our Vocational Rehabilitation students that would include instructions for processing the required paperwork, bookstore charges, billing and payment information for each term.  Our plan is to have this finalized in FY 09.  This would streamline the process for our Voc Rehab students. 

Goal:  Continue to be more aggressive and increase in-house collections.  We continue to take a  customer focused approach to pursuing collections with students prior to turning them over to our outside collection.  We submitted 173 student accounts to collections this fiscal year.

Goal:  Continue to assess customer satisfaction.  Identify ways to improve upon communication of policies and procedures to the campus community.  We received two customer satisfaction responses during the year for which the customer service provided by the Bursar’s Office was found superior.  We continue to update the Bursar’s website with information for our students.

Goal:  Successful implementation of TouchNet Paypath.  Fully implemented in July 2007 and as a result, the institutional has successfully avoided the incursion of approximately $250,000 in credit card fees.  5,689 credit cards were processed totaling $6,025,565.00 and 6,203 web checks were processed totaling $7,062,982.02.

Goal:  Successful implementation of Bookstore to the Rescue Program.  Successfully implemented a bookstore charge program for students receiving Financial Aid funds.  This program allows students to get their books in time for the start of classes without having to wait until residual financial aid funds are available.

Goal:  Contiue to create new Banner reports and streamline existing reports.    The Bursar’s staff is constantly requesting new Banner reports to be created to assist with reconciling, student information, and daily activities. 

4*

General Statement of Department Condition (required)

Overall, the Bursar’s Office operates well and continues to (re)assess business processes to create a more student friendly and focused office.  We recognize that our actions will not be perceived positively by our students and due to the nature of our business we may be at odds with our students.  We have successfully cross trained every position and are now in the process of implementing 3-way cross training to further improve our customer service.

5

Departmental Achievements

• Successfully implemented TouchNet Marketplace & Paypath in September 2007
• Successfully implemented Banner upgrades in FY 08.
• Successfully changed our Department name in FY 08.
• Successfully implemented a bookstore charge program for Financial Aid recipients FY 08.
• Successfully implemented extra calendar days for fee payment prior to cancellation of classes FY08.

6

Staff Productivity

Staff Attended the following training and/or professional development conferences

Tamara Lane

·          GA Summit

Tracy Vines

·          Williams & Fudge Perkins Loan Collection Conference

Pat Murphy

·          Higher One Users Group Conference.

Malissa Lowe

·          Williams & Fudge Perkins Loan Collection Conference

Student Achievements

None

8

Other Awards, Distinctions, and Achievements

Tamara Lane

·          Business & Finance Employee of the Quarter

Jessica Lane

·          Business & Finance Employee of the Quarter

Pat Murphy

·          Business & Finance Employee of the Quarter

Bursar’s Office

·          Award in Excellent Accounts Receivable Management