Payments Risk & Compliance Specialist

Payments Risk & Compliance Specialist

North Kansas City, Missouri

Helzberg Diamonds is a retail jewelry company that operates over 165 retail stores located in malls and open-air venues across the United States, and a growing e-commerce site. The company employs over 2,000 full and part-time associates in store locations and the Store Support Center. The Store Support Center provides centralized information, products, and services to all the stores, while facilitating company innovation, growth, and profitability. The stores are organized by geographic divisions, which are sub-divided into regions and districts.
THE DEPARTMENT:
The Risk Management Division has the primary responsibility to identify, evaluate, mitigate, and monitor the company's operational and strategic risk. The Risk Management Department utilizes Risk Management tools, practices, and policies to analyze and report enterprise risks, and to manage risks according to an enterprise risk management framework. Our mission is to treat risk in the methods most beneficial, economical, feasible and practical for the safety, security and integrity of the Company, its assets, employees, customers, and service providers. Risk Management accomplishes these objectives through a collaborative team approach, solving problems, and supporting Helzberg Diamond’s initiatives.

POSITION SUMMARY:
The Payments Risk & Compliance Specialist is responsible for monitoring and correcting store transaction information, maintaining integrity of store entries to the general ledger, reviewing company expenses, and aiding stores.

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES:
1. Review store information for assigned stores to ensure all transactions are reported correctly. Daily review stores that have suspended items in the Sales Audit Balancing system. Answer store questions regarding policy and procedure and provide support with daily issues. Work with Consumer Finance and Customer Care when they ask for assistance, and notify RLPM of large losses, exceptions, or variances.
2. Daily, review of non-standard transactions (i.e., manual credit card, lease to own, petty cash) to ensure correct policies are followed. Notify and work with other corporate departments to investigate and resolve discrepancies. Follow up on exceptions and work with stores to make any needed corrections.
3. Review daily all credit card funding transactions to ensure payment is received. Work with stores for correcting sale or return transactions. Notify processing company of transactions to be reversed. Daily review of Settlement variances and Offline Authorizations received and processed by stores.
4. Quarterly analysis of aged liabilities to ensure correct volume at stores. Bi-Monthly review of negative liabilities to ensure customer liability funds are accuracy accounted for and processed through the POS to ensure volume for store associate and receipt information is accounted for in customer purchase history.
5. Work with vendor to research or validate warranties for watch repairs. Process buyouts and contact stores for watches that cannot be repaired. Review associate sales transactions monthly to check for discount abuse or policy violation. Bi-Monthly analysis of Associate layaways for compliance of current policy for age and payment requirements.
6. Process and respond to all In-House and 3rd Party credit card ticket retrievals prior to due date by researching related transactions, determining if the company can dispute the chargeback, and if the chargeback applies to controllable expenses. Work with funding vendors to ensure accuracy in chargeback expenses. Respond to In-House Payment/funding rejected transactions with requested information. Process write offs as identified.
7. Assist in monthly review with Finance of open items of In-House and 3rd Party funding recons and work to reduce company liability and expense. Investigate bad checks by researching transactions and sending information to the appropriate vendor or store. Review the checks from the general ledger group and the daily reports from TeleCheck and complete any appropriate journal entries. Research returned checks.
8. Prepare monthly reconciliations for the following accounts: Store Credits, Gift Cards, Cash on Hand, Cash Over/Short, Other Store Returns, Layaway Deposits, In-Store Pickups, Lease to Own, and Customer Refunds. Identify and research differences to the general ledger. Perform month-end balance process. Prepare monthly reporting to be distributed to Regional Managers for compliance and expenses.
9. Track boxes of documents, coordinate shipping of boxes to and from off-site storage vendor as needed and oversee destruction of boxes in accordance with policies and regulations.
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:
The Payment Risk & Compliance Specialist has no direct reports.

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL AND EXTERNAL WORK RELATIONSHIPS:
The incumbent regularly interacts with the POS team, store associates, Customer Satisfaction, Merchandise, Marketing, Loss Prevention, Information Technology, and other areas of Finance regarding store transactions and monthly reconciliations. The incumbent communicates with customers, and works with credit card, check processing and financing companies, repair vendors, and the off-site storage vendor.

QUALIFICATIONS:
High school diploma required, and two to four years of accounting, auditing and retail experience preferred. Basic Microsoft Word and Excel skills required. Basic Oracle skills preferred. Strong organization, prioritization and communication skills required, along with the ability to handle multiple tasks, be detail-oriented and to lead department in manager’s absence. Basic knowledge of retail business is preferred.