The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) builds, maintains and operates Seattle’s $12 billion transportation infrastructure. SDOT has over 700 employees, generates over 22,000 billings, and processes over 18,000 payments. SDOT is facing many challenges related to increasing demand for accounting time with fixed accounting resources. SDOT has several income streams including general sources (General Fund, Property Taxes, Business Taxes, and Parking Taxes) and other sources such as permit fees, gas taxes, fees for service, private partnerships and State and Federal grants. The challenges and the complexity of SDOT operations and revenue generation demands that the accounting processes are well managed and streamlined to allow for quick and efficient transactions. RNR Consulting was hired by SDOT to complete a comprehensive assessment of the current SDOT Accounts Receivables practices with goals of establishing uniformity in processes execution and flow of information (electronic data and paper documents).

RNR Consulting’s commitment to this project involved documenting existing processes, system utilization, and data flow, streamlining these processes and developing well defined Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). We also conducted a best practices analysis to compare SDOT’s Accounts Receivables (AR) practices against similarly sized organizations. The Standard Operating Procedures developed by RNR Consulting were documented electronically to be posted on the SDOT System called SharePoint. The SOPs will be made available to all associated employees through a practical keyword index to establish uniform guidance and procedures for the main activities supported by the AR Section.

The SDOT’s goal for this project was to enable the employees to learn their processes by following approved SOPs. This will ensure that the AR Section operates smoothly and efficiently, the on-job performance is increased and the communication between departments, employees and outside organizations is optimized. SDOT will be able to support its mission and manage its resources wisely with performance measures and provide outstanding customer service to Seattle residents, visitors, regional partners, neighborhoods and business. Finally the implementation of SOPs will allow for increased employee accountability and ownership of their responsibilities, while ensuring continuity of knowledge and management.