SENIOR BILLING & ACCOUNTS SPECIALIST, Research Finance & Property Management

About the role

This position involves preparing, submitting, and tracking sponsor invoices across agency portals; researching, analyzing, and resolving short payments, overpayments, unapplied cash, and sponsor discrepancies; generating and analyzing monthly unbilled and A/R reports; reviewing and recommending write-offs; and providing excellent customer service to PIs, administrators, and central partners.

Responsibilities

• Prepare, submit, and track sponsor invoices (cost-reimbursable, milestone and other award types) across agency portals.
• Research, analyze, and resolve short payments, overpayments, unapplied cash, and sponsor discrepancies.
• Generate and analyze monthly unbilled and A/R reports, surface risks, trends, and actionable insights for management.
• Review and recommend write-offs with full justification and supporting documentation.
• Coordinate with sponsors, central offices, and internal stakeholders to achieve full and accurate cash recovery.
• Investigate complex payment issues including partial payments, denied costs, sponsor offsets, and timing differences.
• Use SAP to its fullest extent, including invoice creation and posting, A/R subledger analysis, dunning and collections, cash application review, and portfolio-level reporting.
• Identify root causes of aged or problematic receivables and assist management in recommendations to standardize SOPs for billing and collections to drive consistency and scalability.
• Provide excellent customer service to PIs, administrators, and central partners; proactively communicate status, issues, and resolutions.
• Contribute to training and dissemination of policy updates.
• Partner with management on strategic and data-driven projects to advance departmental goals and operational efficiency.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in a related field.
• 3-5 years of progressive experience in research administration, sponsored programs billing and accounts receivable, and financial reconciliation within a university or similar research environment.
• Demonstrated excellence in organization, time management, communication, and attention to detail, strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Intermediate (or higher) Excel skills (lookups, pivots, complex formulas) for data acquisition, analysis, and reconciliation.
• A proactive, diplomatic self-starter who works independently and as part of a small, collegial team; able to prioritize routine tasks and ad hoc needs under multiple deadlines.

Preferred Skills

• Hands-on experience with SAP (billing, A/R, cash management, and reporting modules) and sponsor e-billing portals.

Benefits/Other Information

The department of Financial Affairs at Boston University offers a comprehensive benefits package including health, dental, life insurance, and paid time off. Full-time employees are also eligible for tuition remission for courses at Boston University. For more details on benefits, please refer to the Boston University benefits page at https://www.bu.edu/hr/employee-resources/benefits/.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We are a VEVRAA Federal Contractor.