Accounting/Finance.

Perhaps no FEI department has as many moving parts as the Accounting/Finance Department, which carries out the day-to-day collections and postings that any significant business does, as well as dealing with long-range budget and investment issues, benefits, IRS filings and, of course, the annual audit.

For CFO Paul Chase--promoted last year from Controller--that means a combination of inward and outward responsibilities. While he has ultimate oversight over the day-to-day functioning of the department, Chase, who joined FEI in June 1999, is also involved in regular calls and meetings with agents, brokers and other advisers, and with several FEI committees involved with oversight of FEI financial matters.

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With these outside responsibilities, much of the daily functioning of the department is overseen directly by Accounting Manager Maria O'Grady, who joined FEI in October 2001. O'Grady also handles FEI payroll issues, and is heavily involved in the preparation of monthly closing statements. As Chase describes it, she's focused inward, "to make sure that our operation controls are set up, and that the processes are working."

"My role is to set the overall direction and to do the long-range forecasts for our department, and to keep in touch with what's going on with the other departments," he says. "We do touch upon all the other departments here, whether it be the budgets, the financials or the operations side. My role is to keep the communication and understanding going between what's happening in other departments and how it may affect us financially, and then to report it up through the financials."

Chase notes that the department operates under a fairly strict schedule that is set at the beginning of each month. Cross-training means that there is backup capability for each position, so in the event of vacations or departures, the job can be done effectively.

"The most important thing we focus on is customer service to the members," he says. "Whether it's getting out the invoices properly, answering billing questions, providing copies of billing receipts--whatever it may be--we give high priority to getting back to member questions." Canadian member accounting is handled by Susan Johnson in the Toronto office, and she and Chase cooperate on consolidated financials.

Rudolph Katzenberger, a Staff Accountant, is responsible for membership accounting. Katzenberger, an FEI employee since last July, works with the Membership Department to make sure all new members are properly accounted for, and ensures that they are billed, as are the renewing members, at the beginning of the month. He is also responsible for processing severances, transfers and adjustments as part of membership accounting. Chase adds that Katzenberger creates reports summarizing membership statistics and financials, and is involved in the preparation of journal entries and account analysis for the monthly closing.

Janice Francisco, who came to FEI in February 2002 as a Junior Accountant, is responsible for accounts payable and non-membership billing, and she prepares a daily bank deposit. She's also responsible for applying cash when those checks come in. With those duties, Francisco is also involved to some degree in preparing journal entries during the monthly closing.

Accounting Assistant Linda Seabert, who had worked for briefly for the Conference Department, rejoined FEI in April 2002. She handles all of the credit card processing that doesn't come through the Web site, as well as processing the checks sent to the FEI lockbox, where most members send their payments. Seabert also has responsibility for non-member collections, and usually starts when bills become 90 days past due; she will enlist help from other staffers who have had contact with the vendor. "We've been fairly successful in our collections," Chase says. "We have not had any major write-offs."

The CFO, who has an MBA and a CPA certification, is quick to credit FEI's volunteer leaders for their guidance in various areas. Chase serves as staff liaison to the Budget and Finance Committee, the Audit Committee and the Pensions & Investments Committee; all of the panels are filled by member volunteers who meet through scheduled conference calls.

"I'm grateful for the support, the time and the insight that these volunteers give to the process," Chase says. "They take their responsibilities very seriously. They bring a lot of the experiences that they have with their own budget processes, their own audit committee processes at their own companies and the benefits of those experiences to these meetings."

Chase says this liaison duty has become more consistent and routine since his arrival, and that the process works smoothly. The Pension & Investment Committee had not met "for quite a while" before his arrival, he says, but now has regular sessions. Among its major accomplishments, he notes, was the restatement of FEI's defined benefit plan, a restatement required by passage of new laws that changed aspects of plan accounting.

He's also staff liaison to the Audit Committee, which helps set the scope of the annual audit and then reviews it before the annual report is submitted to the Executive Committee for its approval in the fall. Deloitte & Touche has been FEI's auditor for close to a decade, Chase says, and members of its audit team join the staff in making a joint presentation about the findings, recommendations and comments.

In addition to the committees noted above, Chase works closely with FEI's outside Treasurer--currently Alexis Dow--who presents the actual financial reports and forecasts to the organization's leadership.

Then there are the relationships with FEI's advisors for defined benefit and 401(k) plans, and Merrill Lynch & Co., which manages FEI investments. Chase says he focuses on that investment portfolio weekly, if not daily, to make sure that funds are being invested properly.

Chase looks forward to a proposed new association management system (AMS) package--now being researched by the IT Department--that would improve integration with the Web site and boost the Accounting Department's productivity. Currently, Web payments require manual postings to open receivables; the plan is for the new system to have automated links to the accounting system and update the appropriate ledger accounts as payments come in.

Chase also hopes that with a new system, the department could move off Excel spreadsheets for tracking fixed assets, since software for such tracking is "typically one of the add-ons to these accounting packages." Moreover, new technology should allow for far more rapid understanding of financial information, and allow the department "to drill down deeper and provide more analysis" with much less paper-handling.

Another wish-list item for a new system is "a robust conference module." Conference registrations are still being handled by an outside vendor, "and we need to do away with that," Chase says. Currently, that means a lot of post-event reconciliation, which is difficult and time-intensive.

FEI is the first non-profit Chase has worked in. "The accounting functions are very similar to what I've done in the past. What's different here is that because this is a member-driven organization, we have some dedicated volunteers who serve on our committees. They have an interest in seeing the organization move forward and develop."