Octopus Group

Finance Manager
£50,000k per annum
Farringdon, London

Octopus Group is a privately-owned fast growth technology marketing agency with a growing reputation and BIG ambitions.

We work with an enviable roster of 40+ established and fast growth technology and professional services businesses, such as Blackberry, SAP, Marketo, Travelex, Xerox PARC as well as some of Europe’s hottest technology scale-up businesses

With a unique and award-winning ‘family’ culture cultivated over many years, our 65 people are based in Farringdon.      

The Opportunity

We’re looking for a talented and enthusiastic Finance Manager to join our growing marketing agency (+60 people) which serves the UK’s fast-growing tech brands.

You will enjoy a varied role, working closely with key non-finance leads across the business to deliver performance insight for our growing agency. It’s an ideal role for a qualified accountant looking to building upon their technical experience in a commercial environment.

This role will also play a key part overseeing the financial control of the group, ensuring we maintain a healthy balance sheet to support our growth plans.

It reports directly into the into the Finance Director, who oversees an operations team of 5. There’s one direct report for this role, an assistant management accountant, who will take care of the transactional work (sales & purchase invoicing and banking) whom you will oversee and develop.

Role Overview

Management Accounting

  • You will own the preparation of the monthly management accounts, ensuring all variances against the annual business plan are understood, having reviewed the monthly results with the various budget owners
  • You will manage our order to cash cycle, ensuring all client work across the agency is invoiced, recognised and collected in a timely manner (with the support of our assistant management accountant)
  • You will play a key role producing the annual business plan with the Finance Director and develop a rolling forecast to give the business as much forward insight as possible

Financial Management

  • You will oversee the integrity of the group’s accounting and trial balances (which includes two actively trading companies)
  • You will manage the group balance sheet, ensuring monthly reconciliations are undertaken and reviewed with the finance director
  • You will be the key lead in the company’s annual accounts’ preparation by our advisors, Kingston Smith LLP. As the finance lead, you will ensure our trial balances and supporting balance sheet reconciliations are prepared in time for the annual accounts’ preparation and be on point to answer any queries
  • You will oversee the group’s cashflow, producing weekly forecasts for the business to plan around
  • You will prepare and submit all quarterly VAT returns and annual P11d & PSA returns for the group

Business Support

  • You will play a key part in our weekly operations meetings, which review the scheduling of client work across the business.
  • These meeting are attended by our client directors and give us real direction into the future sales invoicing, revenue recognition and business performance.
  • You will work closely with the business to plan in client time into our job planning system (Paprika), from which we can review capacity across the business

Direct Reports

This role has one direct report, an Assistant Management Accountant, who will support you delivering the above.

This role handles our transactional accounting, with sales invoicing, purchase invoicing, banking, payment runs and cash collection.

Desired Skills & Experience

You will be a qualified accountant, either with ACCA, ACA or CIMA and looking to build upon their commercial experience in a fun, family run-like independent marketing agency.

You will have experience of project accounting, preferably in a marketing agency (but not essential)

You will be looking to broaden your commercial experience, alongside delivering best practice finance rigour