Finance explains changes to customer service hours Published March 19, 2009 By Greg Woodson Financial Services Officer TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla., -- Starting April 1, the Financial Services Office is changing their customer service hours to 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. There are several reasons for the change. To begin with, there are a reduced number of customers requiring assistance at Finance. This is due to all the improvements in customer self-help technology, like myPay, Comptroller Assisted Self-Help, Forms Lite, DTS, and LeaveWeb. Customers can complete many transactions and documents on-line without needing to visit Finance. Reduced hours will allow the Financial Services Office to continue providing outstanding customer service during the times we are open and will allow us to focus on processing customer pay documents to the AF Financial Services Center at Ellsworth AFB, S.D. after hours. There has been a significant reduction in finance personnel because of the workload shifting to AFFSC. With the upcoming Financial Services Transformation of our back shop operations to the AFFSC, the Financial Services Office will need to conduct extensive training to prepare for our changing work environment. We ask for your full support of our new hours because they will allow us to provide more efficient and effective customer service to our customers. Another part of the Finance mission is to educate and train customers, so you are better prepared to handle your own financial needs with the tools available. To do this in the future you can click first, call second, and then walk-in to Finance as a last resort.The first place customers should seek solutions to financial service is on the web. Click first and make the Web Self-Service on the AF Portal your stop for financial services inquiries and answers to your Frequently Asked Questions. Continue to use MyPay, DTS, and LeaveWeb as you do today. A current new initiative is something called CASH Forms Lite. CASH Forms Lite helps produce a properly completed, document ready to be signed and submitted. CASH Forms Lite utilizes a "Turbo Tax" like wizard to walk customers through the form filing process from their desktop. As always, you can call Finance customer service for help on your pay issues. The AF Financial Services Contact Center will be ready later this year. The 24/7 Contact Center will provide consistent one-stop answers to your pay and travel questions. Remember to call next after you've checked the Web for self assistance. Your third option will be to walk-in to Finance. Certain processes will still be handled by the local Financial Services Office. Base Comptroller Squadrons will continue to provide emergency customer service in person and a select group of financial processes.