Jason - Accounts Receivable Team Leader

I am originally from Greenville, MS.  I have been with International Paper for two years, as a Financial Analyst in the Accounts Receivable and Inventory Accounting departments.  I became a Team Leader in Accounts Receivable in February.  I chose to work at IP for the endless opportunities within the Finance functions (audit, analyst, controller, etc.).  My personal interests include sports and traveling.

Day 1

Meet with the A/R process leader and compose a spreadsheet to identify daily wire payments to a recently divested business of International Paper.
Meet with a financial analyst in Inventory Accounting to plan physical inventories for Crossett, AR consignment containerboard customer and Gulf South warehouse.  Call the customer and warehouse and confirm dates.
Write off and document payment that a customer made on a written off invoice.
Finish comprising spreadsheet for June that details the Payment on Accounts that the business specialists worked on for the month.  This is a monthly activity of the business specialists within A/R and we measure them on this function each month.
Reconcile a particular account that has been assigned to me.
Run reports to analyze payments on accounts that are open.
Research exemption letter from customer to determine whom the appropriate contact would be to send the letter to.  Obtain help from a team member.
Follow up on check request that needs to be sent to refund a customer money for rebates.
Work with credit department to analyze customer's account to determine how to reduce payments on accounts (POA's) on that account.
Write up second quarter progress reviews to discuss with team members.

Day 2

Run reports to analyze payments on accounts that are open.
Review with Process Leader and publish monthly TIP results for the department (Line Items Cleared/Hour, Cost/Line Item Cleared).
Run requested reports to look at open items greater than 360 days for several different businesses.
Work with credit department to analyze customer's account to determine how to reduce payments on accounts (POA's) on that account.
Work with invoice accuracy team on phone to finialize metrics to measure the accuracy of A/R cash appliers. Also discussed the 1BZ reason code process. As a daily function of A/R, the banks that receive our checks from the customer enter any check and/or remittance information into an EDI file. That file is then sent to our system (SAP) and auto-applies approximately 85% of the checks to invoices. If the customer pays less than the invoice amount, the invoice is cleared and a debit is set up on their account with the 1BZ reason code. A daily function of A/R is to change that reason code to a more appropriately defined reason code (for example, 1BA Pricing).
Attend A/R monthly department meeting. The purpose of A/R's monthly department meeting is to discuss any process issues that we are currently having, to recognize individuals for their contributions, to evaluate our monthly progress toward our productivity and quality goals for the year, and to have an open discussion on any other questions or concerns.
Receive a call from a business requesting information. Work with several team members to get the follow-up information to that business.
Attend cash reconciliation meeting to discuss the new process for reconciling a particular account. A/R debits this account, cash management credits this account.
Work with team member on analyzing customer's account to determine the reasons why A/R is unable to determine which business area to assign the customer's shorts to.
Research duplicate invoices for a business.

Day 3

Run reports to analyze payments that are open.
Research duplicate invoices for a business.
Meet with other Team Leader in A/R to discuss attendance policy and other issues.
Perform quarterly review with a team member.
Analyze POA's that were worked on the previous day. Also look at open POA's and determined significant amounts and how to resolve those.
Reconcile an account that has been assigned to me.
Work on an account recon to report to process leader and credit operations leader. The effect of this account will be presented on Monday.