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The Defense Military Pay Office returned to U.S. Air Forces in Europe command Monday. Milpay transactions include cost of living allowance, family separation allowance and more, which will now be processed by finance offices from each individual base instead of at the Central Processing Center at Ellsworth Air Force Base, North Dakota.
“When these financial transactions are processed at base level it cuts out the middleman syndrome,” said 2nd Lt. Adrianna Perez, 86th Comptroller Squadron Financial Services flight commander. “It allows for the transaction to occur by the military pay team, in most cases the following day.”
The original change was made with hopes that processing these
milpay requests would be streamlined.
“Back in 2007, the decision was made to centralize the milpay process with all transactions being sent to Ellsworth,” said Tech. Sgt. Edward Savage noncommissioned officer in charge of the military pay team. “The impression was that the starting or stopping of allowances would be more efficient. Ellsworth would be the central hub for finance and other bases would be able to operate with minimal manning.”
However, unforeseen problems came up, which made leaders from the squadron command level and higher reconsider having a centralized location.
“After the change was made, things like errors in paperwork or communication weren’t factored in,” said Savage. “Thus, there were customer complaints, etc. and leaders saw more benefit to having this process be done locally, instead of at a centralized location.” Under the centralized system, it would take days to update pay records, if everything went correctly.
“Say you moved out on a Monday, it would take until Thursday to update your pay record with the old system, meaning you could miss a payment,” said Savage. “With the local system, the pay record could be updated the next day.”
