Senior Financial Controller

Required for:As soon as possible
Location: Dean’s Yard, Westminster School
Contract: Full-time, permanent
Hours of work: 09:00 - 17:00, Monday to Friday with an hour unpaid lunchbreak. The role is required to be onsite, though hybrid working can be considered following the successful completion of the probationary period, but with the expectation that the majority of the time will be on site during term time.
Salary: £80,000 - £83,000,dependent on experience
Benefits of working at Westminster include:

• Generous School pension scheme
• Free access to the School’s leisure facilities, including a fitness gym (restricted hours)
• Cycle to Work Scheme and season ticket loans following completion of our standard probation period
• Private medical insurance (opt in)
• Discretionary Christmas shutdown period
• Professional development opportunities

Free school meals are also available when on-site during working hours for the role.
For this role, there is no fixed closing date. Applications will be considered on receipt, and interviews may occur at any stage.

The Senior Financial Controller will be responsible for leading the finance team and managing the day-to-day financial operations for the School and associated charities and companies. This includes month end and year end processes and management of the sales, purchase and general ledgers, bank accounts, expenses system and fixed asset register. They will also be responsible for maintaining a strong control environment, ensuring the accuracy of the Trial Balance and providing a responsive and customer facing transaction processing service.

• Owning the month end and year-end financial accounting processes to deliver accurate and timely trial balance to support the production of monthly Management Accounts.
• Support the year end process to deliver a clean audit and accurate and timely Annual Accounts.
• Responsible for the accuracy and timeliness of the Purchase requisition to Invoice Payment process, fee and extras billings including for fundraising and commercial activity, and collection of income.

They will be responsible for leadership and development of the team to effectively embed the recently implemented iFinance system. They will drive continuous improvement in financial processes, ways of working and engagement with all internal and external stakeholders and customers.

• Leading the transactional accounting team to provide a responsive, efficient and customer facing transaction processing service. Develop and maintain relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
• Ensuring the accuracy of the Trial Balance through both ad hoc and regular forensic review of key figures and processes.
• Ensuring all balance sheet reconciliations and control accounts are completed and reconciled monthly in accordance with a month end close timetable.
• Ensuring bank accounts are reconciled monthly.
• Processing and post journals to ensure that income and expenditure is accurately and appropriately recorded.
• Working with the Payroll, Pensions and Benefits team to ensure that salaries journals are posted accurately each month.
• Owning the Chart of Accounts and ensure that it is fit for purpose.
• Ensuring compliance with Charity and other accounting regulations, including correct allocations between reserves and an accurate Fixed Asset Register.
• Supporting decision making on capital expenditure as required.
• Working with the Financial Planning & Analysis Manager to ensure that the budget is loaded into the iFinance system before the start of the financial year.
• Management of the accuracy and timeliness of the Purchase Requisition to Invoice Payment process.
• Management…