Operational Excellence: Testing a New PCard Reconciliation Process
February 20, 2026
As part of the Operational Excellence initiative at Portland State, some group testing in Finance is seeing positive results, especially in the area of PCard reconciliation.
For those unfamiliar with this monthly task, some employees find it to be very time-consuming and complicated. The process involves gathering receipts from a department, entering information into Banner, downloading a statement from U.S. Bank, and reconciling transactions in OnBase. That’s a simple overview — there can be as many as ten steps involved.
To simplify this work, parts of the university are testing out a new approach — one of the recommendations made by the Operational Excellence Finance Workgroup and approved by President Ann Cudd in November 2025. Under the new process, employees no longer need to access Banner or OnBase. Instead, service center staff manage most of the back-end processes, which have also been streamlined. Department employees still collect receipts, but submit them through a form, and the experts in the service center handle the rest.
This new process supports Operational Excellence goals of aligning administrative structures and strengthening accuracy and compliance.
Scott Jaqua, Assistant Director of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS), is part of a group testing the changes for PCard transactions. He describes the new process as “incredibly liberating.” Like many units at PSU, EHS does not have dedicated administrative staff to manage PCard and other accounting tasks. Scott is one of several hundred employees at PSU who are performing financial tasks outside of their primary area of expertise — his specialty is radiation, laboratory and laser safety, as well as chemical hygiene. His work helps keep PSU’s labs safe for students and faculty — a mission far removed from reconciling financial transactions.
“By centralizing the P-Card reconciliation process, I am able to focus on my area of specialty and address the safety needs of students, staff, and faculty better,” said Scott.
The university is moving toward shifting more tasks to trained specialists, reducing the burden on employees and building stronger, more sustainable operations. Additional finance functions for centralization include customer service, purchase orders and invoice entry.
Vice President of Finance and Administration Andria Johnson, one of the project sponsors, explained the purpose of the changes in the most recent edition of the Bridge Bulletin, a monthly newsletter on PSU’s financial sustainability efforts: “We are shifting from a decentralized model that burdened staff to a professionalized support system designed to let you focus on your core mission.”
The overall objectives of Operational Excellence are to align administrative structures, reduce duplication of work, strengthen accuracy and compliance, and improve career pathways for administrative staff.