Accounting Assistant

City of Farmington • Farmington, NM

12d • Onsite

About The Position

The City of Farmington is seeking an Accounting Assistant to perform a variety of accounting procedures within the Finance division. This role is responsible for implementing departmental goals and objectives, keeping management and customers informed, and acting as a team player. The position involves managing utility work orders, preparing daily spreadsheets for month-end balancing, compiling revenue and statistical reports, and balancing various general ledger accounts. Key responsibilities include preparing tax reports, calculating asset retirement costs, unitizing closed work requests, and ensuring the accuracy of accounting entries. The Accounting Assistant will also handle monthly duties such as preparing the CRS-1 Report, tracking Navajo sales tax, calculating water conservation fees, and preparing annual ad valorem tax applications. This role requires meticulous attention to detail in procedures like "WF Month End" and the transfer of overhead amounts and wages. Additionally, the position involves reconciling interdepartmental billings, entering adjusting journal entries, computing monthly depreciation, and preparing aged receivables reports. The Accounting Assistant will also be responsible for filing and archiving various utility reports, documenting procedures, cross-training, and maintaining safety procedures. Confidentiality and sensitive material handling are essential. Non-essential duties include excellent communication and customer service skills, and potential service on employee committees.

Requirements

• Graduation from an accredited two-year college or university with a degree in accounting, finance, business or public administration, or a closely related field, or any equivalent combination of education and experience sufficient to perform the duties of the position.
• Extensive background checks required.
• Valid New Mexico driver's license with acceptable driving record for the past three years.
• Knowledge of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) statements, theories, and practices.
• Working knowledge of modern office practices and procedures.
• Comprehensive knowledge of computer applications and software packages. Including, but not limited to, Central Square Public Sector, MS Excel, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Access, Adobe Acrobat Professional, Google email software, and other electronic document management systems is required.
• Excellent verbal communication, written communication, analytical and problem-solving, and customer service skills.
• Must effectively communicate with management, purchasing staff, inter-departmental customers and suppliers. Communications must be efficient and timely to keep all informed of issues and pertinent activities that affect them.
• Ability to establish priorities, work independently, and proceed with objectives with minimal supervision.
• Ability to meet deadlines, prioritize work, and be flexible with work assignments.
• Strong work ethic, displaying initiative, adaptability, and integrity.
• Ability to work under stress and handle stressful situations AND/OR must be able to manage a heavy workload under pressure with tight deadlines and frequent interruptions.
• Ability to establish and maintain working relationships with co-workers, supervisors, other City personnel and the public.

Nice To Haves

• Comprehensive knowledge of utility accounting, reporting regulations, operating and expenditure accounts, and work orders related to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is preferred.
• Working knowledge of the State of New Mexico regulations on gross receipts sales tax is preferred.
• Comprehensive knowledge of municipality accounting regulations as determined by the state is preferred.
• Ability to utilize IBM AS/400 computer terminal to input data is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Works under the instruction of the Enterprise Accountant and supervision of the Deputy Administrative Services Director.
• Performs a variety of accounting procedures in the Finance division.
• Responsible for implementing the goals, standards and objectives of the Administrative Services Department and the division.
• Keeps management and customers fully and timely informed of pertinent activities that affect them.
• Maintains system of utility work orders for proper accounting and FERC compliance.
• Verifies account numbers and work orders on reports and purchase requisitions.
• Manages preparation of daily spreadsheets for month end balancing and reports, which includes: utility billing revenue, construction work-in-progress, plant-in-service, and customer utility deposit accounts.
• Compiles revenue and statistical utility billing report for Enterprise Accountant.
• Balances work orders to construction work-in-progress, plant-in-service, and other accounts in the general ledger.
• Prepares gross receipts sales tax, governmental sales tax, ad valorem tax, withholding tax, Navajo sales tax, and water conservation fee tax reports.
• Calculates asset retirement costs for the Electric Utility using Handy Whitman price deflator and tracks retirement and asset removal costs in spreadsheet.
• Unitizes closed work requests, identifying and comparing major asset actual costs with cost estimates.
• Makes adjusting journal entries after each work order is closed and unitized that capture all the cost of the asset in the Electric plant-in-service general ledger accounts, properly accounting for customer's contributed capital, removal costs, and year-to-date depreciation for the asset.
• Balances various general ledger accounts (plant in service, work in progress, accumulated depreciation, construction not classified etc.) each month.
• Analyzes each work request to determine if capital assets are created or if the request is for maintenance work and makes the appropriate accounting entries.
• Daily balancing of utility billing and pooled cash (comparison of entries generated from Electric Customer Service with general ledger amounts).
• Daily balancing of cash accounts for all utilities.
• Prepares the CRS-1 Report (payment of gross receipts taxes, governmental taxes, compensating taxes, and State of NM withholding taxes) monthly.
• Generates monthly revenue reports from the Central Square system by utility service, broken down by service, jurisdiction and rate class.
• Compares monthly revenue reports with taxes collected for the month from customers in the general ledger accounts.
• Calculates compensating tax owed on construction materials.
• Verifies revenue from tax exempt customers each month by running a query on the Central Square system.
• Files the final CRS-1 report on-line monthly and makes payment by ACH.
• Tracks Navajo sales tax monthly and prepares a tax return with payment by FPO quarterly.
• Calculates, prepares return, and makes payment by FPO quarterly for the water conservation fee.
• Prepares annual application for the Electric Utility Ad Valorem tax.
• Accrues monthly expense for ad valorem tax.
• Prepares monthly franchise tax payments.
• Prepares monthly utility statistics reports for the four utilities.
• Runs the "WF Month End" procedure which assigns overhead amounts for Electric work requests and takes all costs (materials, labor, overhead, and other miscellaneous charges) and creates an entry for every City work request that charges various general ledger work-in-progress accounts and an associated contra work in progress account.
• Transfers monthly Electric overhead entries, and wages and benefits from various Electric divisions to the Electric construction division.
• Makes an adjusting journal entry into the ERP system monthly.
• Transfers monthly warning tag revenues from the Electric Utility to the Water and Wastewater Utilities.
• Makes monthly entries to accrue interest and amortization expenses for long-term debt.
• Performs monthly Interdepartmental billing reconciliation.
• Follows up with Accounting Techs Supervisor on any discrepancies in reconciliation.
• Responsible for entering adjusting journal entries for the Enterprise Accountant.
• Computes monthly depreciation in the Continuing Property Records (CPR) module in Central Square NaviLine for all City assets.
• Reconciles amounts in the plant-in-service accounts in the general ledger with amounts in the CPR system, and makes adjusting journal entries into the general ledger monthly.
• Prepares quarterly aged receivables report by utility with a graph.
• Files all work requests, all tax reports, adjusting journal entries and periodically boxes, codes and archives all Utility reports.
• Prepares additional monthly, quarterly, and annual utility reports as necessary.
• Generates reports using query software as needed.
• Documents and maintains procedures for job duties within the Finance division.
• Cross trains on other positions and trains others to be a backup for this position.
• Maintains and adheres to safety procedures.
• Ability to maintain confidential and sensitive material.
• Using excellent communication and customer service skills, establishes and maintains effective working relationships with other employees, officials, and all members of the general public.
• May serve on various employee committees, as required and assigned.

Benefits

• The City of Farmington's Drug and Alcohol Testing Policy which includes: pre-employment testing, post-accident testing, reasonable suspicion testing, return to duty testing, and follow-up testing.
• A pre-employment physical and or drug/alcohol test is required for this position.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: Associate degree