ASUW Transition Website

BOD: Finance and Budget Director

 

General Information

A Letter

Dear Mitchell,

You are now the Finance and Budget Director for the ASUW, a 114-year-old non profit with over 70 employees and a $1.3 million budget with the power to impact the experience of 45,000+ students.  You will run a 10-person committee, create a million dollar budget, spend nearly the same amount, and help decide how $20 million of student dollars are allocated this year. I cannot tell you how excited I am to see you take over this monumental task because I know you are up for the challenge and will bring so much to the role. It will feel overwhelming at times, but it will also be one of the most fun things you will do during your time at UW. ASUW employees from across the organization are now some of my closest friends and I hope you find the same joy as I did in working with people who are so passionate about what they do. 

Being the CFO of Washington’s longest-running non-profit is no small feat, and it obviously won’t be easy. This role will challenge you. It will push you. There will be days where you feel like you are running the whole organization by yourself (and honestly on those days you probably will be). Most people in ASUW don’t know your position exists, let alone how vital you are for ASUW’s functioning. The other Board members don’t know how much work it takes internally from you and the other advisory board members to ensure they can do their jobs. When I felt frustrated about the fact that I was giving ASUW 100% of my energy when others weren’t, it helped me to think about why I wanted to be the Finance and Budget Director in the first place. I was there because I loved the job. I loved that I could utilize my strengths in math and leadership to ensure our 75+ employees and 200+ volunteers could do the work that they love for their communities. I loved supporting students and RSOs across campus. I loved the experiences and the people that this job brought me. I know you were chosen as the Finance and Budget Director because your experience, your passion, your leadership and communication skills, your commitment to diversity, and more stood out among the other applicants. We knew you could and would be successful in this role, and you were who we wanted to lead ASUW into the future. Make sure you know why you chose to be the Finance and Budget Director, and that will help you through the harder times.

If I had any last minute advice that we didn’t cover in our transition or in this document, it would be this: Have fun! Always think long-term because no one else will. Above all, remember ASUW exists to support students as much as possible. And please know, I am always an email, text, or Facebook message away if you ever have a question, need some advice, or want to talk to someone who knows what you’re going through. Not many people do, and until you hand off this account to the next F&B Director, I will always always be here for whatever you need.

Good luck, and I’m so excited for what this year will bring you and what you will bring for ASUW.

All my best,

Christie Lee 

christierden@gmail.com 

415-634-8012

Log-Ins/Passwords

General:

UWNetID/G Suite:

-Username: asuwfb

-Password: iamf&b2021!

Desktop: 

– Username: asuwfb

– Password: iamf&b2021!

HUB Room Reservation:

-Username: asuwfb@uw.edu

-Password: finbudg18

Phones:

Main Office: 206.543.1780

F&B Office: 206.221.7533

Voicemail Password: 137900

Printing:

SAO Office Print Code: 1180 [The printer in SAO]

SORC Print Code: ASUW_BOD [The printer in the Resource Center]

Set 1:1: 

Calendly: asuwfb@uw.edu  123Welcome

Room Reservation: 

EMS Login: asuwfb@uw.edu asuwfb-21

Communication/Marketing:

Slack:

-Username: asuwfb@uw.edu

-Password: FBasuw2019 or iamf&b2021! (make sure to change your login verification phone number to yours!!)

Skype:

-Username: asuwfb@outlook.com

-Password: Congrats!

MailChimp:

– Username: asuwfb

– Password: FBasuw2019!

Prezi:

-Username: asuwfb@uw.edu

-Password: financeandbitchez

Finance/Commerce:

MyFinancial Desktop: (this is a financial tracking program, not tied to your desktop computer!)

-Username: Personal UWNetID

-Password: Personal Password

TouchNet Test Marketplace:

-Username: Provided by Merchant Services

-Password: Personal Password

Merchant Connect:

-Username: asuwfb1

-Password: Congrats!

Quickbooks/Intuit:

– Username: asuwfb@uw.edu

– Password: FBasuw2019!

Quality Bike Products:

– Username: ASUWBike

– Password: ridebikes

QFC:

-Username: asuwfb@uw.edu

-Password: FBasuw2019!

– Card #: 481087208921

– Card Alt ID #: 2019002020

Contacts

ASUW Personnel Director –  Shaheer Abbasi: asuwpd@uw.edu

  • Shaheer is going to be your office neighbor, the person you work more closely with than anyone, and hopefully, a good friend. You will sit on each other’s committees, work together on planning and executing orientation (especially if it’s online), coordinating payroll, workshopping problems and employee issues, etc. Together, you and the Personnel Director make up the actual bureaucracy of the ASUW: Personnel and Finance … hiring/dealing with people and paying for things. You both are responsible for the stability and long-term health of the ASUW and therefore, this relationship is super important. 

GPSS Treasurer: gpsstres@uw.edu

  • You will be seeing a lot of the GPSS Treasurer as they are your equivalent for the graduate student government. Connect with them early as you can use each other as resources for MyFinancial Desktop, the SAF budgeting process, and other projects you work on together.

SAF Chair: Fatin Almaroof: safcom@uw.edu

  • The SAF Chair is an important contact to have as you will be working with them on the ASUW Budget request in Spring. Early on, they can give you an estimated timeline for when you can expect to need to submit your budget documents, helping you create your own timeline. They can also be a good friend as one of the few people who understand how much work goes into your job. SAF is also highly involved in a lot of campus-wide student projects like the IMA Pool Renovation and Hall Health. As such, they will also be coordinating with the ASUW President; I recommend communicating with Timothy when these come up so that you can both be on the same page.

STF Chair: stfchair@uw.edu

  • The STF Chair is now primarily the Vice President’s relationship to maintain, however, there are active funding requests (Senate Website & ASUW Technology) that may need follow up completed this fiscal year. Reach out to them in coordination with the Vice President to have a joint meeting late summer to get on the same page.

SAO Adviser – Rene Singleton: sniglet@uw.edu

  • Rene will be the number one person you work with in your time. She knows everything and is also responsible for doing a lot of the back-end work associated with your role like budget transfers and purchasing. Rene is also the go-to person when it comes to policy and the law as there are legitimately some things that we cannot purchase as an Association (food and gifts in most cases). If you don’t know how to answer a question or if what you’re doing is OK, always double check with Rene before moving forward. I think at least 75% of the responses I sent to people this year when they asked me questions were “let me check with Rene.”
  • Rene needs a lot of reminders to get something done so don’t be afraid to ask multiple times in multiple ways (email, phone, in-person). Rene also loves to talk so keep that in mind when you need to get pressing questions answered by her.

Merchant Services – Melissa Hall: mdhall@uw.edu // pcihelp@uw.edu

  • Merchant Services is your go-to contact for all things Point-of-Sales (POS) and E-Commerce. The Bike Shop and Bean Basket both have in-person POS card readers that allow them to accept payments in the store. Melissa and the rest of the Merchant Services team will be especially helpful to you in learning the ins-and-outs and working out issues. Don’t worry too much about the online website because that was a project Trevor started and only makes sense to continue when we are at full in-person operations.

SAO Program Assistant – Jon Christensen: jjc23@uw.edu

  • Jon will be the guy you order anything from directly. Advisers purchase supplies/make contracts for each entity, but Jon is your go-to person for this as Rene is often too busy (don’t forget to CC her on emails, though).

HUB Facility Maintenance – Kurt Oglesby: oglesby@uw.edu

  • Kurt is the person who will help make any physical alterations or maintenance fixes to the ASUW suites. If you want your office rearranged, a light fixed, or help putting together new furniture, ask Kurt.

HUB Manager of Finance and Business Operations – Lindsey Mitchell (Hale): lchale@uw.edu

  • Lindsey oversees payroll, makes budget transfers and JVs, handles the UW-IT bill, oversees Bike Shop/Bean Basket finances, and other related things. Effectively, Lindsey is the “you” of the HUB – connect with her early on and anytime you have questions about MyFinancial Desktop, a specific transfer, or other expense on the budget you see. Lindsey is also the main contact for payroll issues currently, though you should also CC’in Ellen Kesselman (Fiscal Specialist) as well whenever you are making adjustments to pay rates, have questions about pay periods, or folks have issues getting their pay. 

HUB Director – Justin Camputaro: jcamp77@uw.edu

  • Justin oversees all HUB operations and serves as another adviser to the ASUW. You won’t have much direct contact with Justin, but he is still a friendly and helpful person to know and connect with.

Associate VP for Student Life – Lincoln Johnson: llj@uw.edu

  • Lincoln serves as Associate VP for Student Life (below Denzil Suite), but your main connection to him will be as a SAF Ex-Officio member. He will ask you to lunch/coffee/tea sometime in the beginning of the year and you should definitely take him up on it. He’s a fun person to get to know and has a lot of institutional knowledge (like Rene) about the UW, ASUW, and SAF.

Helpful Websites

MyFinancial Desktop

Special Appropriations

UW Payroll Calendar

Services and Activities Fee Committee (SAF)

Student Technology Fee Committee (STF)

TouchNet (ECommerce)

Merchant Connect (Transaction Summaries)

Manage UW Net ID (Change Name)

ASUW Records

Office Hours

Transition Page (this one!)

Employee Portal

Tasks & To-Dos

Timeline

Timeline for yearly deadlines: I will send this to you as a google doc! I want to make sure you get access to the email account ASAP. Your first deadline is your presentation for Orientation which is the week before school starts.

Immediately

  • Change passwords – Change your UW NetID password, Desktop password, and Slack password right off the bat (You can change the others, too, if you want) Make sure to record the new password here in your transition docs so you don’t forget!
  • Change your Google Account name (Link) and your UW NetID name (Link)
  • Remove yourself from the UW Directory – This is a safety concern as it publishes personal UW NetID and personal phone.
  • Connect with Rene – She will give you a good starting place of things you need to work on right off the bat and the resources and contacts you should be reaching out to. She will also be the one to get you onboarded to MyFinancial Desktop.
  • Connect with Personnel Director – You will be working super closely with them over the year on payroll, Personnel Committee, F&B Committee, Board, and other projects you work on together. 
  • Connect with Coop, who will be working on the Fall Orientation Budget Presentation with you. She has already emailed the F&B Director email to connect with you on this. 
  • Connect with the Advisory Board Team (Personnel, Communications, Vice President, and President) – You will also be meeting every week for the rest of the year, so get comfortable working with each other – there’s a lot of tough decisions to be made in this group.
  • Read, read, read – Start with the Articles of Incorporation (I know, boring), and work your way down through the Constitution, Bylaws, Finance Policy, Personnel Policy, Volunteer Policy, and Communications Policy. The latter two are least important, but still information that is good to know. The finance-related Bylaws and Finance Policy are critical for you to know. Highlight anything having to do with your position, budgeting, finance, or anything related and jot down questions or clarifications you have in the margins. These will be some of the first questions you end up asking Rene. Without a base understanding of all of these policies, you will be lost the rest of the year.
  • Other standard things:
    • Change your voicemail – Given that you’re remote, you can also set up call forwarding so your office phone rings your personal phone.
    • Change your email signature
    • Organize your office (There are a lot of things in there that could — and should — be archived; work with Coop to do so over the summer or whenever you return)
    • Organize the ASUW suite (Create an inventory of supplies to help you when making the summer order list and get things cleaned up for when everyone returns)
    • Order your business cards with Rene/Tracy Wanjiku (Get the smallest amount you can – you will never hand out all of them)

Weekly

General:

  • Post office hours (by Sunday)
  • Respond to emails/Slacks (daily)
  • Schedule 1:1s (as needed)
    • Entity Directors 
    • Bike Shop/Bean Basket
    • Adviser(s)
    • RSOs
    • Ambassador
    • Volunteers/Committee Members
  • Clean up the office/suite (as needed)
  • Work on projects

Meetings:

  • Finance and Budget Committee
    • I recommend delegating the agenda, minutes, prepping documents/Drive, reminding members, and communication with RSOs applying for Special Appropriations to your coordinator, Ella. 
  • SAF Committee (Friday 1-3pm)
    • Prep Thursday by reading agenda/applicable documents. Write questions ahead of time.
  • Board Meeting (Thursday 5-ish)
    • Prep Wednesday by reading agenda/applicable documents, create BOD report BEFORE Board. Creating your Board report during Board is something a lot of people do and it makes them look unprepared and unorganized, and your job is to always be prepared.
  • Exec Committee
    • Prep before by adding to agenda.
  • Senate (Tuesday 5-7pm)
    • Once per month minimum, but can go as often as you’d like. You will get the invitation via email usually Monday afternoons.

Monthly

Reports:

  • Entity Spending Reports (See example email here)
    • Transfer info from MyFD to the FY23 Expense Tracker; have Ella generate PDFs of individual reports and drop into entity folders (in the Budgets folder) that are shared w/ each entity director.
  • Board Spending Report
    • As needed, inform Board member of where their spending is. Before Board meetings, you should always know where the budget stands just in case they ask, but you don’t need to update them weekly; monthly or every-other month is sufficient. (The Budget Snapshot tab in the expense tracker tool might be most succinct for this purpose)

Quarterly

Summer

  • Read (most important bolded)
  • Meet (most important bolded)
    • Rene
    • SAO Advisers
    • Exec Team
    • Lindsey/Ellen
    • Justin
    • Melissa Hall/Merchant Services
    • GPSS Treasurer
    • Fatin Almaroof (SAF)
  • Prepare (most important bolded)
    • Orientation Presentation (from last year and talk w/ Coop!)
    • F&B Documents, calendar, folders, etc.
    • Your Drive (Get familiar with it and make it work for you)
    • Personal Timeline (What are the big milestones for the year and when do you need them completed – recommend putting these in Google Calendar)
    • The Office (Order supplies, clean up, organize, put up name tags on doors, etc.)
    • Schedule F&B meetings
      • Book the room way ahead of time; update the application with the time so people know. Coordinate w/ Rene to find a time that works well for her. You need at least 2 hrs.
      • Once the Director of Internal Policy starts, send the dates/times to them so they can inform Public Records Office along with a blank agenda. They should reach out for this information. Antonio was the Director of Internal Policy last year so he can help with anything related to OPMA/Public Records.
  • Learn
    • As much as you can about everything.
      • Don’t worry too much about things external to ASUW.
    • Review past budgets, spending, etc.
    • Review past SAF documents
    • Review BOD minutes that may be important
    • Learn more about the projects that are ongoing
    • Ask questions!

Fall

  • Meet with Ella, your coordinator! Set expectations for communication, for weekly work, etc. I had open and frequent communication with my AA and we met weekly to check in. I recommend emphasizing communication and letting you know if he has too much/too little work. You are her direct boss so you have more responsibility here than with your committee members to ensure you are both on the same page and he feels comfortable coming to you with any questions/concerns.
  •  Teach
    • Use all that you learned over the summer and start teaching others! You should also continue learning, of course.
  • Appoint (Find interview questions here and applications are linked on each bullet below)
    • F&B Committee Members – 4 people appointed by you, Personnel Director, Vice President, Director of Programming, and 2 Senate appointees (contact the Senate Chair at asuwssch@uw.edu to get their contact information)
    • SAF Committee Members – 3 people appointed by you; communicate with the Senate Chair (asuwssch@uw.edu) to get the contact information for the Senate appointee to SAF to pass along to the SAF Chair
  • Set
    • Board General Fund Spending Cap (This is a Board Bill and is probably the first one you will do. See mine from last year on the records page. Come to this number by analyzing past BOD spending and estimate spending ($10k is a good maximum amount) and you can always change it later – if you feel you have a spend-happy BOD, consider doing less to try and curb that desire. Last year I set a new cap each quarter because the situation with COVID and spending changed so often. I think I did around $2,000 per quarter and we donated Spring Quarter’s Board fund to the Husky Pride Fund.
  • Check In
    • Meet w/ all entity directors during Orientation/first week of school. This is where you can formally introduce yourself, sit them down with their budget, and answer any lingering questions they have. For many, this is their first experience having their own budget, so walk them through what it all means. The way I phrased it was that once they met with me, they were allowed to spend. This was an exhausting week with 25 meetings but definitely worth it! It will save you so much time later to have people conscious of how to spend their money.
      • Depending on how you’d like to do these (in-person or via Zoom depending on what’s happening), I recommend creating “appointment slots” on Google Calendar that people can sign up for. Here is a how-to on doing that!
  • F&B Committee
    • Contact everyone once you have established a meeting day/time to let them know.
    • Educate them on the budget, parliamentary procedure, special appropriations, etc. These documents are already in the Committee Packet folder in the drive. I would take the first few meetings for this. 
    • Walk through F&B policy and make amendments. I recommend creating your suggested amendments ahead of time and sharing them with the committee, and ask for theirs as well. You don’t have to make amendments if you don’t want to.
    • Create the FY24 Budget Packet (use my packet and make changes that you think are necessary. Get feedback from your committee and vote on it, and once it is approved by them you can send it out. I sent it on day 1 of winter quarter but you can send it before winter break if you want.)
  • SAF Committee
    • You will take on a liaisonship to a unit – if possible, limit to one (and an easy one at that). You won’t have a lot of time to be working with a large unit or multiple. I did the Food Pantry because they are pretty straightforward.
  • Personnel Committee
    • You will likely take on a liaisonship to an entity – if possible, limit to the entities you’re already liaising to (Bike Shop & Bean Basket). You won’t have a lot of time to be a Personnel Committee liaison to more.

Winter

  • Meet
    • Entity Director 1:1s to go over their budget packet/budget request. Trevor did this as a mandatory budget workshop so I could be more efficient and so they can work together with one another and Alece thought that was highly effective. I did individual meetings because we were online and that worked too – these should be mandatory because people will not know how to fill out their budget packets. Tell them to work with their SAO advisor to answer questions and support them. Again, this is their first time budgeting and by that point, they haven’t really spent much of their money anyway. You will need to really guide them through this.
    • F&B Committee – continue meeting but transitioning into budget hearings for entities that have requested increases or big changes in their budgets. 
      • Collect
    • Budget packets should be due a few weeks coming back from winter break depending on when you send them out. Once collected, start going through them yourself. Because of time constraints, I only brought ones that were requesting increases or had big shifts in their entities to the Finance and Budget Committee for a hearing. You can do this however you want but I found it effective.
      • Have everyone send you their completed budget packet as a Google Doc, then make a copy and drop it into a separate folder that isn’t shared with them so they can’t edit it after the fact. You should also create a PDF of their budget request (the spreadsheet) and drop it into the same folder. You can have Ella do all of this.
  • Create presentation for SAF Orientation – I recommend signing up for a later slot to present and get ideas from earlier presentations on what to include. Also check mine from last year for ideas/using it as a template.
  •  Draft
    • W/ F&B Committee, draft the FY24 budget – I recommend drafting your own version behind the scenes before the budget retreat so you can see where you’re at and can more effectively guide the committee to where you want them to be. Remember, you are the budget expert and have the most knowledge of the ASUW Budget, but you should give committee members the freedom and space to make proposals and recommendations as well.
    • After passing the budget through BOD by the end of Winter Quarter, begin drafting the SAF Budget Proposal and supporting documents. This is a feat and will take up dozens of hours. Start early and spread out the work. See mine from last year as well.
      • I also recommend bringing in Exec on this (especially the orientation document). They can help proofread and make sure its understandable and coherent.

Spring

  • Hire
    • Hire your successor and sit on a bunch of other hirings as the Personnel Director needs. You’ll definitely be running/sitting on your liaison entities (Bean Basket & Bike Shop) and probably Personnel, your coordinator, and your successor.
  • SAF
    • Spring quarter is the big part of SAF’s agenda: deliberating on the budget. This is a long meeting (made longer by Zoom for me) that spanned over two weeks. There is so much I could say here, but what I’ll leave it at is speak your mind. You were put on SAF just like everyone else and you have just as much right to express an opinion as everyone else. Be respectful of other opinions of course, but use your position appropriately and speak up. Also, come prepared – think of areas where you would want to cut/approve requests.
      • SAF will give you an allocation as well, once you all approve it, you’ll probably need to make adjustments to the budget – do so through Finance and Budget Committee and get it approved by Board. Try to limit your deficit as much as possible by reducing spending, but don’t be afraid to dip into reserves depending on your balance. If you got your full request, no need to do anything! Use your best judgement here.
  • Onboard
    • Assist Personnel in preparing new employees for payroll. This means calculating quarterly pay and getting it all in a nice spreadsheet. See this example. Talk with Lindsey briefly beforehand just to confirm the pay period start and end dates for each quarter.
    • Transition your successor – update transition docs, meet with them, teach them all your wisdom and knowledge!

The Budget & Business Operations

Building It

  • Budget Packet – Review and edit the budget packet w/ F&B Committee.
    • Send it out to Entity Directors before or right after Thanksgiving Break to give ample time to complete them.
    • I recommend, for the spreadsheet part, creating a draft budget document by making a copy of mine from this year (FY 23 Final in the 2022 budget folder) and updating it as needed and restricting edit access for all entity directors to just their tab.
      • This ensures that everything is in one spot and already on your draft budget. Once your deadline has passed, kick them all off the document so they can’t continue to edit.
  • Review – Go over the requests yourself and see where things are at. Based on what the proposed increases are, decide who you want to have a budget hearing. Typically, it’s always those who request above their current budget. The way I decided who had to do a hearing was any entity that was requested a significant increase (more than $1,000) in operations, those who had program changes (SHC with EBEB for instance), and/or changes to jobs. Bring them in for 15-20min hearings so the committee can ask clarifying questions. Mitchell can coordinate those meetings. 
  • Draft – Hold a budget retreat on a weekend. You should have a good idea of what you want the budget looking like when you go in, and guide the committee through the process, but be prepared for the committee to make decisions that you might not agree with. If you strongly disagree with them for financial or even ethical reasons (ex. you don’t think ASUW should put our money towards something) feel free to be firm in your opinion. (A lot of things are standard, but if you have controversial proposals or options, give F&B Committee the chance to weigh in for sure).
  • Pass – After passing out of F&B present to Board. Before that, though, send F&B Committee’s recommendation out to all entities so they can appeal the decision to BOD if they so choose. Note that personnel committee doesn’t have an appeals process, so if they have issues on the personnel side of things (like a position not being passed), F&B can’t really do much about it. It takes two readings to get through BOD
    • For the appeals, you should give at least a week, if not two. The Finance Policy has the exact timeline.
  • SAF – As stated previously, now is the time to send it off to SAF for their review. Follow the instructions provided by them.
    • My recommendation when presenting to them is to be as vague as possible. Give them too many details and they will nit-pick and it won’t go well. Be prepared for them to ask pressing questions because they will challenge your request.
  • Adjust – Make any adjustments after you get the SAF allocation back. This may include deficit spending, cutting budgets, etc.

Managing It

  • Managing the budget is probably the easier part of the job. You will “manage” the budget primarily through those monthly reports.
    • Tracking spending via MyFD and the Expense Tracker Tool is what you’ll do most of the time. Once you input the actual expenses each month, have Ella generate the individual monthly reports and PDF those to put into the entity folders as previously discussed.
    • Otherwise, most of it comes down to “approving” expenditures or being kept in the loop on big spending. All expenses from the General Fund (our savings) that aren’t already in entities’ budgets need to be approved by the F&B Committee AND the Board. If Board members want to spend money, they must get your approval. If they want to spend from the General Fund or something else, they have to do a Board Bill (if over $1,000) or you need to do a Finance Bill (if less than $1,000) through F&B Committee. You should also set the expectation that you need to be kept in the loop on major spending (anything over $1,000 or so). Not that you have to approve those purchases, it’s just so you don’t get frightened when you see it on MyFD. Give people the freedom to spend from their budgets while looking over it mindfully.
  • Other policies:
    • Reimbursements aren’t allowed typically, and only in rare circumstances. Set the expectation that no reimbursements are allowed and if they really need one, to get PRE-APPROVAL from SAO. Otherwise they’re out of luck and no money for them.
    • ASUW funds are public funds. No, you cannot buy food unless its for a training. No, you cannot donate money to whatever you want – even the Husky Pride Fund was questionable but due to COVID, we could allow it thanks to Inslee. This is super important because this is really the policy that can send you to jail (mostly a figurative warning, but there is a literal component).
    • Rene and Coop can give you a whole list of things you can’t buy or do with your money and will likely do so at the start of your training. Unfortunately, you get to be the “bad guy” in telling people no – and they will get frustrated. It’s important to highlight that your job is not to brainstorm or think outside the box for others, your job is to enforce the policy and clearly state the constraints – you can help them figure out ways to get around those constraints, but its not your responsibility to come up with all the ideas.

Business Operations

  • In addition to overseeing the entire ASUW budget, you are also responsible for working with the Bike Shop and Bean Basket. This is an important relationship as they are our two businesses that generate consistent revenue – they are also the most fun to work with because of that. Couple things to note about these:
    • You approve all policy decisions. Notify board when you do so and they can veto, but all policy and business decisions are approved by you.
    • You need to get everyone who will be touching a card reader (Bike Shop and Bean Basket employees, yourself, etc.) to be signed up for training. You can find the form Merchant Services wants us to use here. Do this at the start of the year and update it with new hires and people that need to be on it. You should also ensure that Coop and the Bean Basket advisor are included on that sheet as well as yourself.
    • You will also need to do a compliance test with Merchant Services once in-person operations resume. They will walk through the workflow and ensure that everything meets the standards it needs to – they should reach out to you at some point but here is the email Trevor got.
    • Quickbooks is what we use to track transactions and inventory for both shops. You should become familiar, but by no means an expert. I also highly recommend getting the version (Pro Plus) that allows us to save to the cloud so that we can access Quickbooks data from anywhere. It’s a $300/yr fee per license, but I think its worth it. You will also probably need to train the Bean Basket manager on using Quickbooks because its so new for them. Here are some videos/articles I think are helpful.
    • Coop is a great resource for all things business since she’s been handling the Bike Shop for a while and Patrick knows the Bean Basket better than anyone.
    • Here is how to order more receipt paper for the card readers.
  • MIDs
    • We have 3 MIDs (Merchant IDs)
      • ASUW Bike Shop : 8034250590 — Tied to 16-9402
      • ASUW Bean Basket : 8034250632 — Tied to 16-9404
      • ASUW : 8034250566 (This one is set for E-Commerce) — Tied to 16-9624
    • These are how we identify our business operations with Merchant Services. If you ever have an issue concerning
  • Merchant Connect
    • I didn’t use this last year since our businesses are closed but here is what Trevor told me last year: “This is the tool I use to peek into daily transactions for each MID (mostly the Bike Shop at this point, but could be extended to the Bean Basket if you want to start logging it). This is also important if the batch reports don’t print off so you can confirm the daily sales and transactions. Reminder, these are only there for 60 days, so I would make sure to log the daily transaction totals in the Daily Sales tracker (especially for the Bike Shop, but you should also create one for Bean Basket).”

Committees

Appointments 

  • Here are your committee appointments:
    • SAF:
      • 1 F&B Director (you)
      • 4 At-large
      • 1 Senate 
    • F&B:
      • 4 At Large
      • 2 Senate (contact Senate chair for their personal informations)
  • Be intentional on who you appoint. It is so much better to delay than to get someone who might not be right for the job. With SAF, I highly recommend asking about potential financial conflicts of interest (like if a person is employed by a unit) because it is good to understand those before making appointments. Definitely strive for a diverse committee – don’t appoint only white men/finance majors/Foster Bros; focus on getting women and people of color because a big goal recently is to diversify the SAF committee!
    • Be aware that there is a strong possibility you will have to defend decisions you make, so make sure you are confident in your selections.
  • Interview potential candidates if you are having trouble narrowing it down.
  • Outreach is vital to getting good applicants. Post reminders/links to the application on department mailing. Also, write up blurbs for OOI and others to distribute through their platforms. I also reached out to the ECC last year to get a wider range of applicants.

Finance & Budget Committee

  • Try and appoint non-ASUW people if possible. Your job is to empower future leaders, so give those unfamiliar with ASUW a leg up. They don’t need finance experience to be on the committee, only interest in ASUW/budgeting.
  • The general schedule throughout the year with projects for the committee:
    • Fall:
      • Assign entity liaisons, go over this year’s budget, entity liaisons meet with their entity to learn about them – you can even have them meet with the respective SAO adviser for more context/institutional knowledge. You are a budget generalist, let them be budget experts – give them the tools to do so.
      • Review/amend the budget packet.
      • Learn parliamentary procedure.
      • Learn about Special Appropriations.
      • Review/amend F&B policy.
    • Winter:
      • Review budget packet/spreadsheet submissions.
      • Hold budget hearings.
      • Deliberate during the budget retreat.
      • Invite committee members to the BOD meeting, too!
    • Spring:
      • Invite committee to SAF presentation if you want!
      • Amend the budget after SAF allocation comes back.

Special Appropriations (Tied with F&B, but separated for ease of reading)

  • Manage the Special Appropriations spreadsheet to keep track of requests and where they’re at in the process.
    • Have Ella schedule with RSOs, too so you are flooded with emails.
  • Train your committee using a mock-RSO and know the policy:
    • Make sure they know about all the applicable policies.
    • Make sure to set your caps per/RSO (I did $3,000/RSO/year, but you can change it if you want.)
    • No fundraiser events. Consider adding this to the website as well!
    • No money can go towards food or gifts to be given out (this includes shirts, prizes, etc.)
  • Be explicit with Ella when you want him to schedule an RSO hearing – if you know you have a busy meeting, tell her to schedule it the following week. With all the email chains, it can also be hard to tell what’s what – so be sure you’re sending her the right info. 

Services & Activities Fee Committee

  • The most important finance-related committee you sit on.
  • Always read materials ahead of time so you come prepared and always have questions. It’s better to be the only one with questions than to have no one ask any because I guarantee you, someone has the same question you do, but is unwilling to ask it.
  • When presenting to SAF, be as vague as possible – don’t dive into all the specifics about our budget. The ASUW and GPSS are already very public with our budgets and processes, so don’t give SAF any opportunity to nit-pick more than needed.
    • An example of this is when we extended some summer hours for employees. Instead of me putting down exactly who and how many, I simply left that bullet point at “Additional Summer Hours”. If they have questions, they can ask, but otherwise be strategic.

Executive Committee

  • Use this space effectively by bringing up things you’re working on, things you want input on, and things you need support on.
  • We ended up talking through a lot of personnel issues this year in Exec so our Personnel Director could bounce ideas and get suggestions on how to proceed. I used Exec to get input on our priorities and values when heading into budgeting, talking about capital projects we wanted to pursue, and discussing other uses of funds
  • Though Exec does not make any true decisions, you all advise and support one another to make decisions in your areas. For example, Personnel might come to Exec with an issue they’re dealing with and ask for advice or other input from everyone else. Though Exec might agree on a course of action, all the “decision” authority on how to proceed is already in the Personnel Director’s role. So again, Exec doesn’t make decisions, but we run our ideas by each other for input before moving forward on something.
    • Another example was capital projects. I would always come to Exec to discuss the capital project before taking it to BOD. It’s easier to discuss and present an argument to a group of 4 others than to all of BOD, so use them as a sounding board before presenting something to BOD.

Joint Commission Committee

  • As an ex-officio on JCC, you really don’t have a big role to play. I went twice – once to give a “finance training” on how to ask for funding and to guide them through the process of setting their fund restrictions (like max amount per event) and another time when they were deliberating and voting on a fund request.
  • The way this money is allocated is by taking all the surpluses from each commission at the end of the year, balancing out any deficits in any of the commission budgets, and taking the overall net surplus. If it’s more than $15,000, then that’s the starting balance. If it’s less than $15,000, then the starting balance is whatever that amount it. There needs to be a minimum of $1,000 in the fund.
  • Talk with the Director of Diversity Efforts at the start of the year to go over the application, the process, the guidelines, etc. See the Bylaws for all the policies on the JCC Fund – I recommend printing it out and going over it with them together.
  • You will have to be the “bad guy” when it comes to their requests that fall outside the limits of what we can spend money on. When that happens, just clearly state the constraints/policies that we are bound to and, if you have ideas, present alternatives when possible.

Things to keep in mind

Unfinished Projects (Optional – From Trevor): 

These are all projects that Trevor started and I did not work on last year. I didn’t update these at all so this is just what Trevor told me last year. You don’t have to make any of these a priority. This is only if you want to take these on.  

  • Phones
    • Update phone locations and caller IDs with UW IT. There is a spreadsheet with all the entities, numbers, control numbers, locations, and caller ID preferences. You will need to update the list with the control numbers (silver sticker on the top of every phone) then forward this off to UWIT for their. Phones should not be moved from location-to-location without contacting UWIT, but nevertheless, things have moved year-to-year and all of our phone locations are messed up. This is a safety concern as anyone calling emergency services from one of these phones will also provide the location automatically; so if the location is wrong, then emergency services won’t know where they are.
      • As we talked about during transition meetings, it might be worth setting the BOD ones to “ASUW BOD 1” and so on since those change so often. It would also be useful to have them reset voicemail on every phone too and direct entities to reset their voicemail greeting with something generic: “You’ve reached the ASUW Bike Shop, for shop hours and other information, please visit us online at bike.asuw.org, for general inquiries or issues, please email us at asuwbike@uw.edu. Thank you.”
  • Technology
    • This year we discussed briefly a “Bring Your Own Device” policy for the ASUW as a solution to addressing our aging technology. Our current tech has not been updated in several years and its starting to show. We decided it would be best for the long term to transition to a BYOD system where folks are expected to use their own laptops for working considering the fact that most employees already do this anyway. We got through drafting a preliminary policy and got a shopping list for a laptop-checkout-cart for those who don’t have a laptop or need it one-off. At this point, it’s just a matter of getting new-exec to sign off on it and incorporate it into Personnel Policy. Darius Strobeck, ASUW Systems Administrator (asuwtech@uw.edu), will be your contact for this one as he was involved this year in the project and was re-hired. Here is the folder with the draft policy and current tech inventory responses.
      • You probably won’t be able to finish the tech audit over the summer because it’s likely ASUW will still be remote, but could be something you pawn off to Darius as soon as everyone returns. 
  • Archive F&B Files
    • There are a number of binders/files in the office (and VP’s office) that are no longer relevant and can be archived. Most could probably be shredded as well… Connect with Coop who was responsible for the massive archival process in SAO a few years back to start the process with your files. Also connect with the Personnel Director as they have a number of files to archive, as well (two birds with one stone). Rene has mentioned previously that there is a group/academic program on campus that you can pay to archive these for you as well and might be worth looking into as the ASUW has a number of files that could be archived or discarded to make space and clean up.
  • E-Commerce
    • I have started to build out an e-commerce solution for the ASUW with UW Merchant Services. SAO has been briefed on it and are aware of it as well. It’ll be on you to continue developing it and implementing it for a number of things, probably most importantly is donations/Husky Pride Fund and ticket sales. Melissa Hall at UW Merchant Services is your contact for this project and helping you learn the system. I would recommend setting up a 1:1 meeting with her to go through the basics of e-commerce so you can get a “tour” of the platform.

Best Practices/Tips and Tricks:

  • Rene is brilliant and knows a ton – she can be a great sounding board for your ideas and can give you more ideas, too! Use her as a resource
  • Know how to utilize Board. Never bring ideas/concepts/half-assed thoughts to Board for input. That 1.5hr block everyone sets aside in their week is for actionable items like approving Board Bills or giving Finance Updates. Always do the work behind the scenes to connect with people directly impacted by your decisions/plans (typically just Exec) before going to Board for approval. When going to Board, be confident but odds are, if you sound like you know what you’re doing/talking about, there won’t be questions; and if there are, answer them clearly and confidently. As for Board Bills, don’t waste your time writing beautifully elaborate bills with a thousand WHEREAS clauses. Stick to the relevant information and put most of the emphasis on the THAT clauses (those are the ones that actually do the thing that you want). Additionally, some of the things you do don’t require a Board Bill, but they do require notifying Board. You can do this a couple ways: 1) just tell them during Finance Updates or 2) write up a “Notice of Authorization” which isn’t a Board Bill, but leaves the paper trail that Board was duly notified of a decision you made.
  • Every Slack, email, and letter you get/send is considered public record. Keep that in mind.
  • You are the CFO of the ASUW – you’re the budget expert. As long as you speak confidently, come prepared, and answer questions clearly and definitively, employees and the Board will listen.
  • Find what works for you in terms of work-life harmony and stress management. There are definitely going to be weeks where you pull in over 30hrs – and it’s those times that it matters a whole lot about how you practice self-care. Do what’s best for you!
  • Don’t just be the mysterious budget person who looks at spreadsheets all day. There’s a lot unwritten in this job and its not glamorous at all. Part of your job is being a Vice President and supporting employees when the Vice President is busy or doing other things. You might have to be the person that helps rearrange someone’s office, the person who creates and prints out the name tags that go on people’s doors, who picks up and cleans messes, who fixes the printer when it breaks, who orders supplies, who helps with phones, etc, etc, etc… you get the point. You won’t be thanked for any of this work, either, but it has to get done to keep the ASUW running day-to-day.
  • Make the rounds… take a break in the middle of your office hours and go say hi to folks in other offices, get to know them, and let them know you’re there for them. Honestly, you have more day-to-day contact with employees than anyone outside of the ASUW or Board themselves.