Women in power - Sarah Smith

Name: Sarah Smith
Title: Plant accountant
Started at CCEC: 2007

“I track all of the plant” may be an unfamiliar and strange phrase to those outside the power industry. In this case, it means knowing the exact number of power poles, the total feet of wire, the valuation of the whole system, and essentially the numerical side of the whole grid, which is all information at the fingertips of plant accountant Sarah Smith.

Smith’s background prepared her to work with data at Cass County Electric Cooperative (CCEC). She took on her first numbers job at the suggestion of her accounting teacher in her junior year of high school, working as a part-time teller at State Bank of West Fargo. Smith graduated from North Dakota State University in 2003 with a degree in business. She kept her position at the bank into college and expected to continue working in banking, but it happened that a neighbor who was a CEO at a Wisconsin cooperative encouraged her to look into the co-op world. She watched for openings, and when the plant accountant position became available in 2007, her neighbor insisted she apply. She almost didn’t complete the long application, but she did in the end, and the next 15 years are history.

As the plant accountant, Smith’s day-to-day work generally entails monitoring and processing work orders for the engineering department, first opened by the design construction supervisors, with whom she works closely to process billing and reconcile materials. On average, she handles about 1,000 work orders each year. Once a month, she collects all the work orders ready to close, meaning they have had all their costs posted, and runs the monthly closing, ranging from 30 to 200 work orders per month. Smith also handles billing for installing and upgrading services, plant damages, and material purchases through the warehouse. It is her responsibility to make sure what’s on the paperwork accurately reflects what is in service in the field.

Plant accounting is a kind of specialized accounting, “but I won’t go into the nitty-gritty details,” she laughs. Smith appreciates the opportunity to discuss the work she does with other plant accountants at other co-ops who understand the unusual system and lingo. She is the only plant accountant at CCEC, so she networks with her counterparts at in-person trainings and they reach out to bounce ideas off of each other and ask questions. There is ongoing software training available, but no specific training for a new plant accountant, so they have all learned as they went.