“I’m afraid I don’t have any funny stories,” Controller Nancy Lepic says of her team in Accounting. “We’re famous for being a very quiet department.” But for a quiet group, they’re plenty busy (especially at the end of the month). Our featured branch last time was Burlington.

Nancy Lepic, Patty Wells, Denise Dionisio, Millie Milkovic, Heather Stevlingson, and Sherri Kroening.

Personnel
Nancy Lepic, Controller
Denise Dionisio, Cash Flow Coordinator
Sherri Kroening, Senior Accounting Specialist
Millie Milkovic, Accounting Supervisor
Kristin Monday, Senior Financial Analyst
Heather Stevlingson, Assistant Controller
Patty Wells, Senior Staff Accountant

What is your department’s main purpose, and what are the services it provides?
Most people at the bank are familiar with the Accounting Department because we pay vendor invoices and reimburse employees for business-related expenses. However, those are just two of the many functions we perform. We also control the bank’s general ledger system, prepare the bank’s income and sales tax filings, produce a monthly financial package for management, submit detailed quarterly regulatory reporting as required by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, coordinate the preparation of the bank’s annual budget, and process wire transfers.

What are some things you’d like other departments or branches to know about what your department does?
We file the bank’s insurance claims for property damage and general liability. If there is damage to a branch facility, or if a customer is injured at one of our locations, the branch or department manager should contact Kristin or me.

What events or projects or times of the year keep your department especially busy?
Accountants have to deal with lots of deadlines; we are routinely busy at the end of a month or quarter, but we’re used to it, so it’s not too bad. The end of the bank’s fiscal year is a bigger deal. We generally spend the month of October preparing for the year-end audit, so that we can publish the bank’s audited financial statements before the end of December. We also get very busy during the summer, the bank’s budget season. Heather (an Excel wizard) builds the models that managers use to submit the budgets for their branch or department, and then she puts all of the pieces together. All of this is manageable until a big project, like a bank acquisition, comes along. Then we need to scramble to get everything done.

What are some important moments or people in the department’s history?
We’ve seen lots of changes during the past few years. The bank’s regulator changed from the Office of Thrift Supervision to the OCC in 2011. The significant reporting changes that resulted required months of preparation. In 2013, when the bank stopped using a third-party mortgage servicer, the Accounting Department assumed responsibility for mortgage investor accounting and reporting. We assumed that we could do this without adding any staff, and we succeeded. It wasn’t easy at first, but now it runs very smoothly.

Also, after years of almost no turnover, we’ve had some significant staffing changes over the past year or two. Jennifer Rampolla moved to Texas, and Barb Thompson retired after working at the bank for almost 30 years. It’s always hard to say good-bye to good people, but the new folks who joined the department are great. Kristin joined us after previously working in accounting at Bank of Kenosha, and Denise worked at Maritime Savings Bank and then in North Shore’s deposit operations before joining our team.

Any personal celebrations or milestones among the people at your department recently?
We have lots of reasons to celebrate! Kristin and her husband, Mike, welcomed a healthy baby, Henry Joshua, into their family this month. Millie and her husband, Mico, are looking forward to the birth of their first child in October. Also, Denise just graduated from MATC with an associate’s degree in accounting.

Any exciting or noteworthy developments on the horizon for your department?
We’re a small part of a big project to introduce a new online banking system for business customers. We’ll be rolling out a new and improved way for business customers to initiate wire transfers in June.