“The Treasury Symposium annually brings together university treasury and controller professionals to highlight and share best practices. This year the symposium met in Savannah, Georgia, where the hospitality more than made up for the unseasonably chilly weather. Frank Montgomery, Controller, Scott Davies, Treasury Office, and I attended the three-day event. I was impressed with the passion of the symposium’s founders to promote collaboration and communication among schools. Frank and I presented our experience using measures to improve performance in cash management. As Scott noted, the UW is on the front end of the curve for metrics. Our talk was well received; the door is open to return next year. Having seen what measurement can accomplish, people were very eager to know how to create dashboards.

Here are some highlights from the symposium:

Cash-related trends:
• An electronic transaction that has promise for the UW is an accounts receivable (lockbox) conversion that converts checks received at a lockbox to ACH. Schools in a pilot program have seen lower processing costs and fewer unpaid items.
• Several schools have gone exclusively to E-bills for tuition and experienced a smooth transition. Several schools have also switched to “mandatory” direct deposit. Again, with a good communication plan none of the schools encountered significant opposition to the change.
• One practice that was flagged as risky is electronic commerce of all types (i.e., credit card, ACH, receipts) because of speed, volume, anonymity, and automation. To counter these liabilities, “layers” of security are essential to reduce exposure and combat fraud.

Debt-related trends:
• Public institutions face a struggle to maintain their current level of state support.
• There are more institutional defaults on borrowing and downgrades of credit rating, especially for private institutions. Public institutions appear to have a more stable outlook.
• Regional universities and elite private colleges will be less impacted by debt-related trends than non-regional and smaller schools.
• Competition between schools means pressure on tuition (affordability) and emphasis on facilities.

.