Cookeville Accounting Department Uses New Hire To Help Growing Work Volume

Cookeville’s Accounting Department has filled a new position to help with its operation.

Finance Director Brenda Imel said that it was City Manager James Mills who recognized this new hire as a major need for the department.

“The volume of work that we do back here has grown substantially,” Imel said. “And it’s just to the point now where we’re not able to keep up with everything that we should so this person is going to come in and take the roles of doing certain responsibilities so that we can keep up with everything.”

Imel said that the department had an internal hire for this position. She said that the next steps are getting the personnel trained and assessing how to split up responsibilities.

Imel said that the number of personnel has stayed the same since she began in 2003. She said that the volume of work has grown exponentially during her tenure.

“Payrolls become more complicated, the ACA made us do more work with tracking health insurance for our employees, and payroll deductions, that kind of thing,” Imel said. “We write more checks, we have a lot more projects going on where we try to do accounting for projects to make sure that the funds that were designated for those projects are spent on that project, make sure we don’t go over budget or under budget or that kind of thing.”

Imel said that additional personnel will be a huge help to her staff.