Roles and Responsibilities

Overview

Our finance community consists of many roles and responsibilities across various levels and job titles. Understanding how our finance organization is structured will ultimately boost efficiency and productivity.

Learning Topics

Financial roles and responsibilities

The financial roles described here are common in most divisions. Depending on how your unit is organized, one person may serve in multiple roles or a role may not exist.

Dean / Vice Chancellor

  • Provide fiscal and budgetary leadership to their division by reviewing internal budget requests and making needed trade-offs to promote divisional priorities.

  • Work with chairs, faculty, and managers to establish priorities.

  • Approves final budget submission and leads strategy discussion with campus leadership.

Divisional Finance Leader (DFL)

The Divisional Finance Leader (DFL) develops and implements their division's budget process, advises their leadership team on key budgetary decisions, and serves as an advocate for the needs and priorities of their division. More specifically they:

  • Manage the development and execution of the division’s multi-year and annual budget plans. Support the budget submission to the EVCP and preparation for the annual budget hearing. Advocate the division’s needs and priorities.

  • Advise their leadership on key budgetary decisions, e.g., allocating campus support, aligning resources, making budgetary trade-offs to meet division’s strategic priorities.

  • Engage in campus financial planning and initiatives. Work with the campus to review their division’s financial status and maintain the budget process.

  • Periodically, e.g., monthly or quarterly, review the division’s financial status to address issues and foster informed and effective decision-making.

  • Establish a process for the ongoing monitoring of budget-to-actuals and meaningful financial management reporting within the division.

  • Establish internal financial control, e.g., SAS115, and ensure financial procedures are within compliance.

  • Authorize, or empower delegates to authorize, CalPlanning security requests and provide local tool assistance. Go to the list of local support contacts to find your division's CalPlanning Access Provider and CalPlanning Tool Assistant.

  • Approve or delegate approval for: 1) position creation and position funding in UCPath; 2) reimbursements; 3) travel; 4) telecom changes

Assistant Dean, Chief Academic / Administrative Officer, or Chief of Staff

  • In partnership with the DFL, establish the calendar/timeline for planning the division’s annual budget in order to meet the campus budget due dates

  • Develop implementation and communication strategies to achieve the division’s goals.
  • Advise the Dean/VC on key budgetary decisions.
  • Serve as an advocate for the division’s needs and priorities, and ensures efficient operation of the immediate and business offices.

Department Chair

The Department Chair provides academic, fiscal and budgetary oversight of their department.
  • Work with the faculty to set department academic priorities within the broader context of Campus and Division.
  • Identify faculty needs and submits new proposals for searches, start-up needs and retention cases to the Dean.
  • Oversee the development and execution of an annual budget plan for the Department.
  • Review and approves annual budget submissions prior to the submission to the Dean.
  • Allocate funds to promote the priorities of the Department and Division.

Manager / Director / Supervisor

  • Manage and provides leadership to department(s), including oversights of fiscal and budgetary operations.
  • Link functional and financial departmental plans based on strategic priorities and budgets.

Financial Analyst

  • Support the DFL or budget owner with financial planning and analysis to meet campus goals and requirements, and divisional operations’ support.
  • Populate budget templates and forms, sends them to the department leads and meets with them to review their submissions.
  • Upload and enter data into CalPlanning.

Budget Owner

  • Responsible for the effective management and leadership of their unit/org including fiscal and budgetary issues related to their unit(s).
  • They are expected to have linked functional and financial plans for their area of responsibility. Those plans should clearly articulate a set of priorities and have established a budget to achieve those priorities
  • Other responsibilities may include completing templates or other variance analyses.

Policies that govern the work

The Financial Analyst Competency Framework is a portfolio of tools to enhance professional development for the finance community. It was created by a group of financial leaders across campus in partnership with the Haas School of Business.

The UC systemwide competencies apply to all UC employees, regardless of location, level or role within the University. They are aligned with the mission, vision and values of the University and its locations.

Systems used

The Job Builder application has standardized templates from HR for developing formal job descriptions including for finance professionals.