Practice Manager​/Accounting Operations Manager

Practice Manager / Accounting Operations Manager

Location:

Remote – South Africa, ideally Cape Town or Johannesburg

Salary: R80,000 – R110,000 per month, depending on experience

Qualification:

CA(SA) or SAIPA Professional Accountant

Experience:

5–10 years post-articles experience

Our client is looking for a highly capable, hands-on Practice Manager / Accounting Operations Manager to take responsibility for the day-to-day management and continued development of a growing accounting practice.

This is a senior operational role for someone who can take ownership, manage people and clients, solve problems independently and build the systems and structures needed to support growth.

The successful candidate will initially manage a team of approximately five employees, with the team expected to grow over time.

The core objective of the role is to take increasing responsibility for the operational running of the practice, allowing the business owner to focus more heavily on strategy, growth and business development.

• Take ownership of the day-to-day running of the accounting practice
• Manage, lead and develop an existing team of approximately five employees
• Recruit and build additional teams or departments as the business grows
• Allocate work and manage team capacity and workflow
• Ensure deadlines, client commitments and internal targets are consistently achieved
• Implement and improve processes, workflows, controls and accountability
• Train and develop employees to improve technical capability and performance
• Monitor team and individual performance against agreed targets
• Work directly with clients and take ownership of client queries and concerns
• Deal confidently with escalated client matters and operational issues
• Ensure work is accurate, complete and delivered on time
• Identify bottlenecks and implement practical solutions
• Improve systems and processes to make the practice more efficient and scalable
• Take increasing responsibility for operational matters currently managed by the business owner
• Support accounting, tax, payroll, company secretarial and related practice requirements where needed
• Maintain appropriate quality, compliance and professional standards
• Build a culture of ownership, accountability and delivery

Strong exposure to accounting practice technology is important.

Experience with several of the following systems will be highly advantageous:

• Great Soft
• Draftworx
• Xero
• Karbon
• Dext
• Simple Pay
• Sage Accounting / Sage One
• SARS eFiling
• CIPC

Candidates do not need experience with every platform but must be highly comfortable working with accounting technology and learning new systems quickly.

• Qualified CA(SA) or SAIPA Professional Accountant
• Completed articles
• Approximately 5–10 years' post-articles experience
• Strong accounting practice or professional services experience
• Proven experience managing and developing staff
• Experience managing multiple clients, priorities and deadlines
• Strong client-facing experience
• Experience training, mentoring and developing employees
• Strong understanding of accounting, taxation and compliance processes
• Excellent organisational and operational management ability
• Comfortable working remotely while maintaining high levels of accountability and performance

The successful candidate must combine strong technical accounting knowledge with leadership, operational ability and commercial judgement.

We are looking for someone who is:

• Stable and dependable
• Highly accountable
• Practical and solutions-driven
• Calm under pressure
• Confident and appropriately assertive
• Highly organised
• Commercially minded
• Willing to address poor performance directly
• Confident dealing with clients
• Able to resolve problems without constant supervision
• Able to create structure where…