26 Jun 2024
Each month, we give an inside look at the work happening behind the scenes at the College of Law. The Business Office staff assists with budgets, reimbursements, contracts, hiring, onboarding, and various expenses. Their work ensures that everyone at the College is aware of policy guidelines regarding financials and that any needs they have in that area are met.
Business Office Staff:
Cindy Harris, Business and Operations Manager
Alex Lenhard, Finance Coordinator
Q: How does the business office support students, faculty, and staff at Nebraska Law?
CH: For students, we manage the student organization budgets, reimburse students for expenses related to student organization meetings, and ensure that the office space is up-to-date and maintained as needed. For faculty, we manage various items from travel reimbursements, answer questions about reimbursements, and manage conference payments. We aim to make payments prior to conferences so faculty do not need to wait for reimbursements. We also handle office issues and updates as needed. We support staff by assisting with payable payments, non-travel expenses, and foundation payments. We ensure that all understand the policies and guidelines related to payments.
AL: We ensure that our bills are paid, equipment is ordered, contracts are completed on time, teaching contracts are sent, and students are reimbursed. We also help navigate the budgeting process by producing worksheets for each department. As you’d expect, a lot of the ways we support the people in our building is by getting them paid or paying for what they need. On the surface, it may seem simple enough to pay someone or pay for something, but there are often different policies we need to navigate to get that job done.
Q: What is your area of expertise? What does your day-to-day work entail?
CH: My daily work varies depending on what is happening. There are always daily approvals for travel, payables, visiting personnel forms, foundation payments, and transfers. I work with the Big Red Business Center (BRBC) to request hiring approval, position descriptions, and position requisitions. I work closely with supervisors when a position description needs to be updated and with HR to answer questions and obtain the approval of these descriptions. In onboarding new hires, I issue keys and request NCard access for doors so the employees can access various doors in the building. I also schedule door access for the outside and internal doors. If there is an issue in the building, I am the one working with our maintenance team to resolve the issue. This summer we have worked to update several spaces in our clinical building and classrooms. Finally, there is the financial reporting, budgeting, Foundation fund management, and handling requests from the Executive Vice Chancellor's office on administrative documentation.
AL: Right now, my work is split between assisting Cindy and the rest of the college and making sure the Schmid Law Library has all of its needs taken care of, including paying invoices, completing contracts, coordinating with vendors, and ordering resources. My day-to-day usually starts with checking my inboxes, as I monitor 3 email accounts. Depending on the time of the year, I’ll have a few long-term projects I’m working on as well. I have a slew of spreadsheets that need updating to keep track of expenses and provide relevant information to Cindy.
Q: What is your favorite part of working at Nebraska Law?
CH: I enjoy working with the staff and helping them resolve challenges that may arise due to policy constraints and also helping when they need someone to reach out and resolve a problem.
AL: I’m lucky to have such understanding and kind colleagues. Things change a lot throughout the year and they're able to work with me to help accomplish our goals. Communication goes a long way in both directions and I’m glad to have that rapport with them.
Q: What do the busiest times of year look like for your department?
CH: For me I am always busy and really do not have a down time. January to July is exceptionally busy with new hires, contracts, budgets, and year-end.
AL: Personally, I feel that February through June is always the busiest time. During that window of time, I work on departmental budgets, professional development budgets, teaching contract letters for the following year, student organization budgets, and getting financials finalized for the end of the fiscal year. Everything is sort of coming together at that point and so folks are spending their budgets or want to know what’s left, and at the same time, we’re putting a considerable amount of work towards determining what next year is going to look like.