Management Accountant

We’re a Bristol-born hospitality business that’s growing quickly, and we want our Finance function to keep moving just as fast. We’re looking for a Management Accountant who takes ownership, gets stuck into the detail and naturally looks for a better way of doing things. You’ll get underneath our gross profit reporting, take responsibility for key parts of the period-end process across our 300+ site estate and influence how we produce our numbers so that insights and forecasts reach the business faster and more accurately than they do today.

We’re actively thinking about how our systems, data and reporting need to evolve for the next stage of Loungers’ growth. For the right person, this role offers the opportunity to take a leading role in that finance transformation and help shape the way the team works in the future. This is a role for someone who enjoys both doing and improving.

Someone who is comfortable getting into the detail today, but ambitious about making that detail easier, faster and better tomorrow.

This is a hybrid role based in our HQ in Central Bristol 2-3 days a week and working from home 1 or 2 days a week

Period-end ownership and reporting

• Lead gross profit reporting across our 300+ site estate, building a strong understanding of what really drives food and drink performance.
• Take ownership of key areas of the period-end close from start to finish, making sure the numbers are accurate, complete and delivered on time, and with the story behind the numbers ready to tell.
• Prepare and post journals, accruals and other period-end adjustments, supported by clear and robust working papers.
• Produce and maintain balance sheet reconciliations, investigate reconciling items and drive them through to resolution rather than simply carrying them forward.

Insight, analysis and decision support

• Turn financial analysis into something useful. Explain what happened, why it happened, why it matters and what we should do about it to both finance and non-finance audiences.
• Analyse performance, variances and high-value spend, spotting patterns, risks and opportunities.
• Lead budgets and forecasts for your areas, constructively challenging assumptions and helping to improve forecast accuracy.
• Use data to ask better questions and support better operational decisions.

Business partnering and stakeholder engagement

• Build strong relationships with stakeholders across Operations and HQ, helping them understand their numbers, control their costs and identify practical opportunities for savings and efficiencies.
• Communicate financial information simply and confidently, and take ownership of queries and issues.
• Build and improve reports and dashboards that give stakeholders the right information in a clear and accessible format.

Systems, data and process improvement

We don’t want someone who accepts ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’ as the end of the conversation.

• Look for opportunities to remove unnecessary manual work, automate repeatable tasks and make our processes more efficient and robust.
• Challenge spreadsheets, reports and processes and find practical ways to simplify them.
• Help shorten the gap between something happening in one of our sites and the business having the information it needs to act on it.
• Make better use of Excel, Power BI and our wider finance systems to improve how information is produced, controlled and shared.
• Play a meaningful role in the wider transformation of our Finance function, helping us rethink processes, systems, data and reporting for the next stage of Loungers’ growth.

Team contribution and audit support

• Support the annual audit and other Finance requirements as needed.
• Share what you know with the wider team and help others develop.
• Help we continually raise…