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The Maine Credit Union League partners with its credit unions to collaborate and cooperate for the future of our credit unions and their members. Periodically, we feature one of our dedicated staff members in an effort to help you get to know the people working in support of your credit union team.
Erica Danylko, Team Lead – Accounting, celebrated eight years with the League and Synergent in September. In that time, Danylko has gained experience relevant to both sides of the organization in quite a few roles on the Accounting team, and she is always eager and ready to learn more.
“I started as a Billing Specialist to learn the company and eventually took on corporate billing—which is essentially gathering data to put billing together—before landing with financial statements,” said Danylko. “In general, I’d say I’ve had my hands in every part of our department at one point or another.”
Danylko landed in the accounting field because of the work she performed in a bank vault right out of high school and she always has been proficient with math. From there, a career path in accounting developed.
“Staying with accounting since then has been so easy thanks to the League/Synergent’s Accounting and Finance team,” expressed Danylko. “It’s always a great place to learn new things from other roles and talk out solutions with fantastic people.”
“I also tend to focus on reviewing data coming in to ensure it is accurate and coded to the correct places for reporting at the end of the month,” explained Danylko. “By month-end and year-end, I am running financial reports and analyzing our budget to actuals. My role is mainly financial statement-focused, so I keep an eye on making sure our company stays in good financial standing to allow us to keep assisting credit unions. I also help track all the Ending Hunger funds to make sure our end-of-year totals and calculations are on-track.”
Supporting the League and Synergent’s accounting is only one aspect of Danylko’s job. The work Danylko does behind the scenes for Maine Credit Unions’ Campaign for Ending Hunger does not go unnoticed. Without her tireless work to track funds from fundraisers, both on the Maine Credit Union League’s end and credit unions from across the state, the Campaign would not run as smoothly. She has a key role in identifying year-end fundraising totals for each credit union and the Campaign as a whole, which credit unions raised the most by asset and member size, and whether the Campaign’s yearly fundraising goal was met. Danylko is critical in the Campaign’s functionality, and it is only one of many aspects of her job.
“My favorite project that I’ve done was quite a few years ago,” reflected Danylko. “We were in a situation of manual data entry from paper to computer for a very large billing process. I managed to create Excel workbooks that link to digital data and then filter based on type and customer. This allowed our billing team to only need to enter any one-off requests and to check for anything out of the ordinary. Overall, the process used to take two people a full five days to complete. Now, the process is down to one person for two days.”
The potential challenges in accounting do not intimidate Danylko. In fact, it is quite the opposite.
“I absolutely love how much of a puzzle accounting can be,” expressed Danylko. “It’s a great day when I’m doing research or analyzing data and can come up with a solution.”
Danylko has had ample opportunities to problem-solve and further develop accounting skills during her time with Synergent. She has found it to be a wonderful learning experience both personally and professionally.
“I’ve gained so much knowledge and confidence with Excel,” said Danylko. “I would like to brag that I am the guru of Excel in our department! I enjoy finding new ways of connecting and organizing data to make our work a simpler experience.”
When met with a challenge or a chance for development, Danylko tackles it head on.
“I think my growth is the highlight of my career,” said Danylko. “I have been given the opportunities to gain experience, learn, and change, which keeps me engaged and very happy. This truly is a dream job for me, and I could not be happier to have the coworkers I do.”
Outside of work, Danylko loves to spend her time reading, seeing stage shows and watching movies whenever possible.