A Fresh Look at Accounts Receivable

Josh Breeden has had a busy first year as a Staff Accountant in UVAFinance.  A new graduate of James Madison University, Breeden started in October 2015, diving into his new role, learning the ropes, and adapting to the culture. 

It wasn’t long, however, that he started tackling process improvement.  

Josh and the King take a moment to contemplate the past year.

Breeden’s position in the Comptroller’s office had been vacant when he arrived.  Without shadowing a predecessor, he found himself free to formulate his own way of doing the job.

“During my first days on the job, I heard Pat Hogan encourage employees to ‘not be afraid to fail,’ and I took that as my mentality for my first year,” says Breeden.

Trial and error was a part of Breeden’s process, and the results have been successful indeed.

“Josh was a fresh set of eyes,” says Randy Ellis, Associate Comptroller for Financial Operations and Reporting.

“He’s streamlined numerous accounts receivable and collection processes, improved documentation of procedures, and launched training for all billing departments across grounds.”

One of the first things Breeden noticed was that there was a collections module within Oracle that wasn’t being utilized, which meant the process was being done by hand, based on reports run from Discoverer.   He quickly started working with ISDS

to implement the module.

“The collections process at UVA requires us to send 3 collection letters and 2 phone calls, per state guidelines,” says Breeden. “It can be a lot to keep up with if you’re doing it by hand.  The collections module makes it easy to store all of that information and keep track of everything. It’s all right there.”

Because of this improved efficiency, Breeden wasn’t devoting as much time to aging reports, and he found he could help out around the department where and when he was needed.

His improvement efforts weren’t contained solely within UVAFinance, either.  Later in the year, he facilitated a training on policies and procedures for all billing departments across Grounds. 

“During the training session, we bounced new ideas around to help improve the billing process across Grounds,” says Breeden.

Based on the questions raised in these sessions, Breeden plans to meet with attendees one on one to further smooth out the billing process across the University.

Although his efforts have certainly improved processes within UVAFinance and provided great service to financial partners across Grounds, Breeden says he can’t take all the credit.

“We have great teamwork,” he says.  “Laverne Beasley has been here close to 20 years, and her historical knowledge was the perfect match for my fresh set of eyes.”

He adds that his leadership team was also receptive to new ideas, lending their expertise to his ideas and helping him move forward.

“I bounced ideas off of a lot of people,” he says.  “That’s how you find better ways of doing things; that and being open-minded to change, and not stopping at ‘this is how we’ve always done it.’”

Now that he’s been here a year and has several successes under his belt, you might wonder what’s next for Breeden.

“I don’t have any plans at the moment,” he laughs.  “But we’ll see what happens in the New Year.”