Financial Controls Manager; Initially

Job Description

In this role, you will play a key part in strengthening the financial integrity of the organisation by leading and managing the monthly Balance Sheet reconciliation process and providing assurance on the internal control environment. As a manager within the Compliance and Accounting Control team, you will oversee the monthly balance sheet reconciliation process, ensuring timely and robust financial control, address reconciliation issues, undertake root cause diagnostics, implement permanent fixes, identify and resolve aged items, and recommend and implement bespoke reconciliation software solutions to improve automation and timeliness.

Balance Sheet Reconciliations: prepare and review monthly reconciliations, ensuring all have supporting documentation, investigate and resolve reconciling items and aged balances, maintain audit schedules and audit trails.

Financial Control: ensure integrity and accuracy of the general ledger, support month‑end and year‑end close processes, monitor suspense, accrual, prepayment and control accounts, identify control weaknesses and recommend improvements, ensure compliance with accounting policies and procedures.

Analysis and Investigation: analyze unusual movements or variances in accounts, review trends and identify risks or errors, perform root‑cause analysis on discrepancies, work with operational teams to resolve underlying issues.

Audit and Compliance: provide supporting evidence for internal and external auditors, ensure reconciliations meet audit standards, support statutory accounts preparation, assist with compliance around VAT, payroll, treasury or tax reconciliations where relevant.

Stakeholder Engagement: liaise with AP, AR, payroll, treasury, tax and operational teams, communicate outstanding issues and actions clearly, and escalates material risks or unresolved items.

Organise and manage your own workload and that of direct reports on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to ensure that period‑end and year‑end deadlines are consistently met, balance competing demands from various areas, and lead or actively participate in cross‑team projects and initiatives.

Contribute to setting financial priorities in alignment with the team's overall objectives, evaluate potential risks associated with financial decisions and implement strategies to mitigate them, and apply a thorough understanding of relevant financial policies and processes while effectively communicating them to both technical and non‑technical colleagues across the organisation.

Essential – CCAB (or equivalent) professionally qualified accountant with a minimum of five years post‑qualified experience; significant senior level experience of Balance Sheet reconciliations in a high‑value, high‑volume organisation; experience and understanding of financial controls and audit requirements in large and complex organisations; financial and statutory accounting experience, in particular reporting under FRS
102 and Charities SORP; excellent communication and relationship‑building skills to effectively partner with stakeholders and promote collaboration.

Desirable – High proficiency in Excel, including ability to create functions and formulas; background in external audit or experience managing external auditor relationships; experience with large accounting systems (e.g., Oracle Fusion).