Travel and Procurement Coordinator

Job Summary

The Center for Student Involvement (CSI) at the University of Colorado, Boulder is seeking applications for a Travel and Procurement Coordinator! This position provides travel arrangement, purchasing, maintaining travel records, monthly and yearly account management. Additionally this role supports student organizations and the office by creating and maintaining website pages and resources, managing gift, award, and prize programs, and collecting documentation for and remitting monthly sales tax. This involves using various CU purchasing forms and methods, preparing journal entries, processing and recording deposits, and reflecting transactions in the BuffConnect student organization management platform. With a student-centered approach, this position serves to support day-to-day interactions with students, answering student organization financial questions, assisting walk-in traffic, and providing information to assist in the development of CSI staff.

What Your Key Responsibilities Will Be

Travel Procurement and Reimbursement Management

• Conduct pre-spending trainings for student organization leaders for all student organization travel allocations to determine travel needs, advise them of applicable policies, restrictions, timelines, and available methods for making travel arrangements consistent with university guidelines and student government spending restrictions.
• Ensure post-training agreement is signed by organization signatory and appropriate documentation of training is reflected in shared office drive and student organization management software.
• Train student organization travel card cardholders on appropriate use, related procedures, and compliance with the travel card program as needed.
• Coordinate with home department staff to provide travel budget amounts and speedtypes as authorized by student org administrators for travel arrangements not made by CSI staff.
• Support student organization leaders to ensure travel purchase/ arrangement request are appropriately entered into the Organization Management system.
• Procure flights, lodging, registration, and ground transportation for student organizations with travel arrangements funding, when requested.
• Advise departments of proper protocol and processes for organization travel.
• Compile, validate and review receipts turned in for reimbursement and process travel reimbursements/expense reports for student organization travelers.
• Evaluate charges for appropriateness and reasonableness.
• Advance questionable charges to higher-level decision makers when appropriate.
• Provide interpretation of travel policies and rules to CSI leadership, CSI staff, student organization administrators, and org advisors as appropriate.
• Support Graduate and Professional Student Government on individual travel grant process, create and update resources and advisement on travel policies, acquire necessary approvals for selected grant recipients for each grant cycle, and maintain office records of approved, accepted, and processed grants.
• Create, implement, track, and distribute semesterly student organization Cleary Travel Reports.

Procurement / Expense Reimbursement

• Coordinate all phases of CU Marketplace procurements as needed including purchases from Marketplace catalogs, initiating POs and PV's, compiling and navigating payment paperwork for suppliers including Honorarium forms, Scope of Work forms, and both small and large dollar contracts and ensure appropriate documentation, i.e., vendor quote is attached, and the sole source justification is included when situation demands
• Work with vendors and the Procurement Service Center (PSC) as needed to make necessary purchases, facilitating and guiding new vendors in the PSC supplier registration process when needed
• Identify, investigate, and help resolve issues/discrepancies associated with purchasing and invoice payments
• Procure goods and services up to $5,000 for a unit using a university-issued procurement card, as needed, ensuring tax exempt status is applied or tax is refunded, collecting appropriate receipts for procurement card reporting
• Compile and maintain documentation as part of the procurement process to ensure the department is in compliance with records retention policies and can provide any documentation requested for audit
• Process expense reimbursements using appropriate mechanism dependent upon the citizenship and CU employment status of the purchaser, collecting and sending required international status documentation for review by International Tax Specialist when needed, or communicating steps needed to be added as a Concur delegate for the purchaser
• Review documentation to ensure it is complete and applicable to the specific reimbursement.
• Confirm funding and allocation, ensuring appropriateness of the expense related to the approved budget, that purchases were made within the allowable timeframe, and that the items are allowable per CUSG Student Fee Regulations, CUSG legislation, and funding board bylaws.
• Ensure proper workflow tracking and approvals are in place to facilitate the processing of all reimbursements in a timely manner
• Investigate when issues arise with missing payments. Process Warrant Adjustments to re-issue payments or cancel them as needed

Website and Student Org Management System Maintenance and Student Resources

• Regularly review and make recommendations for additions, revisions, and updates to the Finance section of the CSI Website, as well as the student organization management system fiance tool
• Create resources for and train students and staff on the use of the student organization management system Finance tool
• Work with Accounting Lead to review and revise office resources, policies, and practices as it relates funding boards, allocations to student organizations, and student organization account management

Monthly and Year End Account Management

• Reconcile monthly account statements using BuffConnect records and financial statements
• Use appropriate communication methods to identify, research, and correct account errors, resolve issues, and reporting deficits and abnormalities to supervisor
• Close accounts for completed events and activities in accordance with various funding board spending deadlines and return unspent funding to funding sources, per university regulations
• Coordinate the creation and approval of journal and cash transfers with campus departments and area accountant
• Ensure all appropriate documentation and relevant information is included or is attached to the journal entry for processing
• Serve as financial liaison for assigned student organization categories. Provide policy and procedure guidance to the student organizations
• Help with speedtype management, including requesting speedtypes, renaming speedtypes, and assigning speedtypes to student organizations
• Collaborate on developing ways to improve the effectiveness of data collected from students on forms submitted through the BuffConnect system
• Assist in creating, reviewing, and maintaining finance policies and procedures
• Provide accounting and finance support to CSI administration and units as needed

Award/ Prize program Administration

• Research and maintain up-to-date knowledge of all campus policies related to awards, prizes, and recognition.
• Provide interpretation of these policies to appropriate CSI staff and create and maintain informational resources for staff and students.
• Work with CSI Leadership to create annual and one time prize, award, and gift card polices, for CSI programming.
• Serves as Gift Card Program Custodian for CSI and student organization prize programs, where applicable.
• Work with student organizations, to determine appropriate use, and amount, of prizes for various situations, creating and administering prize programs, as needed.

Cash management

• Maintain petty cash boxes for student organization reimbursements including cash disbursements (backup), regular reconciliation of cash box balances against cash on hand and distribution records, and replenishment check requests.
• Maintain change fund/ cash vault including taking weekly balance, monitoring fund level, and requesting changes when needed.
• Work with Campus Controllers office to lead periodic petty cash audits.

Back-up for CSI Finance Office Functions and Other related duties as assigned

• To include staffing departmental events, committee appointments, Student Affairs divisional projects, etc.,
• Cross-train and maintain knowledge of CSI Finance processes to serve as back up as needed, to include completing journal entries for revenue/ expense transactions, make corrections, etc.
• Review Finance Access requests and provision access as needed
• Back-up support student organization account activities by processing deposits and event receipts for student organization activities, creating cash boxes for upcoming special events and student group fundraising activities, and facilitate purchasing for student organization operations and events