The front line for financial questions

The Financial Support Center (FSC) assists the Yale community and its suppliers with questions about accounts payable; Workday finance transactions; supplier, tax, or financial reporting; and provides guidance on policies and procedures.

The team of eight finance support center agents and their manager work with departments and almost 8,000 foreign and domestic suppliers to resolve concerns or escalate them to subject matter experts as necessary. Each year, they field about 35,000 requests and aim to respond within 48 hours. Originally called the Contact Center for Shared Services, it was reinvented as the FSC to provide one central hub for all financial inquiries.

“Most of our calls are about accounts payable, including invoicing through issuing a payment. In addition to internal departments, we have suppliers from across the country and world reaching out about payment status, remittance support, or statement reconciliations. If we don’t have the immediate answer, we will find it or get you to someone who can help,” said Michael DellaBianca, finance support center and PCard program leader.

Typical queries involve accounts payable (AP), supplier compliance, procurement, and policy and procedures. While the FSC team cannot change transactions, they can provide guidance on how to make or edit one.

“We are the front line for all financial questions and are tier one to answer calls using our knowledge base training or experience,” said DellaBianca.

Always looking to improve their services, FSC’s management regularly reviews the types of questions and tracks trends and metrics. Working closely with peer departments, this team has been able to determine system issues and recommend Workday enhancements.