Assistant Director, Budget Administration, University of Maryland University College

>> My name is Alyssa Petroff, and I am the Assistant Director for Budget Administration within the Office of Institutional Advancement at University of Maryland University College. So institutional advancement has -- we're three departments wrapped into one. We have our Career Services Team and our Alumni Relations Team, as well as our Development Team. So I manage the budgets for all three departments, all of our state funds, and then I also manage all of our -- the spending of all of our donated funds, making sure that money is spent within donor wishes and making sure that payments are paid on time. I try to work with each of our three department heads on their budget before the beginning of the fiscal year. So we just started our fiscal year on July 1st. And so starting in May, I started the conversations with each department at about the next fiscal year. You know, what are you planning on spending? What does the year look like for year? Are we planning on changing anything? And kind of work through there. Also, in, you know, conversations throughout the year, if we're planning on adding in a new tool or adding and a new vendor, it's helpful to know that information so that I can anticipate that when that happens. The end of the fiscal year has -- is the biggest time crunch, because we all know that it's coming, but there's a lot of details that need to happen, making sure that vendors are paid on time, making sure that reimbursements are done on time and all that kind of stuff. Throughout the year, I work with each department head to -- on their budgets to make sure that we're spending in line with what is in their state account and making sure that all of our events are in budget and all of our vendors are paid properly and vendors are actually completing their work. I heavily utilize spreadsheets to complete my job. When I do budget reporting, I pulled down reports out of our financial system, which we use Workday here at UMUC, and the information that's in that system, the way it comes out might not necessarily be legible to or readable to, you know, our department heads. So what I do is I kind of change the way the data is laid out in an Excel spreadsheet, so it's easily digestible by the individual and they know exactly where they are at the end of each month.