Financial Controller/FD Designate
The company is a privately owned entrepreneurial £22 million turnover Technology solutions Group with subsidiaries in the UK and US. Operating within a high growth business sector, the company employs over 200 staff and has shown impressive year on year growth, with ambitious plans to double again within 3 years. The company supplies ‘award winning’ innovative products to a million customers Worldwide. To continue supporting the development of the group at this exciting stage an ambitious Financial Controller/FD Designate is required to support the UK MD and manage group consolidation.
Key Accountabilities
To take the lead ensuring accurate, timely and insightful management information for both the UK subsidiaries, group consolidation and group accounts.
Have the initiative and experience to improve the accounting processes and procedures to make full use of a newly installed ERP system (Sage ACCPAC), automating transaction processing and providing insightful management information to support profitable growth and cash management.
Provide excellent commercial support and a sounding board to the Group CFO, the UK MD and his team on investment decisions, pricing decisions and run the profit improvement programme.
Reporting to the CFO and working closely with UK MD, responsibilities include:
- Production of accurate monthly management accounts to group reporting timetable providing relevant and useful information to assist meeting UK targets.
- Maintain visibility of forecast outturn up to end of next financial year by maintaining an effective forecast of income, balance sheet and cash flows, highlighting issues in good time to enable corrective action to be taken.
- Provide commercial support to Business Managers to aid the business double billing and profitability. Examples include segmental profitability, customer lifetime values, return on investment in marketing, management of a rolling profit improvement programme.
- Manage the UK & group cash resources, maintain a 12 week rolling cash flow forecast, including ensuring billing completeness through to cash collection. This will include management of a debtor book and collection activity.
- Implement processes and systems to support the delivery of the above responsibilities.
- Maintain compliance with (1) a suitable set of group accounting policies and procedures (2) delegation of authority document including approval of payments and financial concurrence on purchase orders as required.
- Develop and then maintain detailed balance sheet validation performed monthly.
- Agree and deliver all compliance reporting to agreed timelines, local payroll, corporate and other taxes plus filing plus client schedules for audit and tax purposes.
- Coach and develop the skills of a small team. Work closely with the US Controller to extend cover between units where possible and ensure consistency throughout the group.
Person Specification
Candidates must be a graduate with strong academic results, qualified Accountants (ideally ACA) strong technically including either experience of group accounts/consolidations or at the very least a strong technical knowledge of the group accounts including foreign currency subsidiaries. Also candidates must demonstrate good common sense and intelligence to become a highly valued Commercial FD to support the UK MD achieve growth, profit and cash targets. As a high volume low value business it will help if the candidate is highly systems literate with excellent advanced Excel skills.
Candidates can come from a number of sectors; either already in industry but you are looking for a broader FC role with more commercial exposure or you might have a significant post qualified experience in the professions (corporate finance/transaction support/audit) and are looking for an FC role. These candidates will need to demonstrate real maturity to step into such a broad role.
The position is very ‘hands-on’ suiting a inquisitive person bursting with initiative, drive, commonsense and strong communication skills who will thrive on making significant improvements to their environment whilst pushing to step up to FD roles in the future.
Package
Basic: to £65,000 dependent on experience plus pension 4% matched, healthcare, life assurance, 25 days’ holidays, annual discretionary bonus based upon company and individual performance against objectives (up to 10% of base salary).