Air Force consolidating financial services in S.D. By Scott Schonauer, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, January 9, 2008
KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Airmen overseas will soon rely on a central finance center in South Dakota to process routine transactions such as travel vouchers, pay requests and allotments.
The Air Force is consolidating financial management processing operations at 93 base finance offices worldwide into the Air Force Financial Services Center at Ellsworth Air Force Base. The move is expected to save $210 million over 10 years, according to the center’s Web site.
The new financial center opened last September and launched a self-service Web site that is already handling some financial issues for airmen. In October, the Air Force plans to open a 24-hour call center to handle financial operations for airmen by telephone, e-mail or the Internet.
Airmen are encouraged to use the Web site now and the new call center once it opens. They will still be able to walk into the base finance office for some services in Europe, said Lt. Col. Audrey Burkel, a U.S. Air Forces in Europe spokeswomen.
The new center will handle what is called “back office” financial work. That includes the processing of travel vouchers, military pay issues and entitlements. Local base finance offices previously handled such paperwork.
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