Job responsibilities
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES & RESPONSIBILITIES
Financial Management and Reporting
- Produce timely and accurate monthly management accounts for the charity and trading company.
- Lead yearend processes and work with the Director of Finance to prepare statutory accounts in line with the Charity SORP (FRS 102).
- Liaise with external auditors, ensuring an efficient audit process.
- Maintain robust balance sheet reconciliations
- Monitor and manage cashflow.
- Oversee restricted and designated funds accounting.
- Work with the Director of Finance to prepare financial reports for trustees, committees, and senior leadership.
Budgeting & Financial Planning
- Coordinate the annual departmental budgeting process and support longterm financial planning.
- Provide analysis and advice on complex financial information to support decisionmaking by budget holders and managers.
- Monitor departmental performance against budgets and identify risks, variances, and opportunities.
Payroll & Pensions
- Oversee the processing and delivery of monthly payroll.
- Ensure operational compliance with HMRC, pension regulations, autoenrolment, and internal controls.
- Support accurate administration of pension schemes and employee benefits through payroll.
Financial Controls & Compliance
- Maintain financial policies, procedures, and internal controls, and provide guidance to other teams on relevant policies procedures and controls, e.g. retail refund process.
- Ensure departmental compliance with relevant legislation including HMRC, VAT, Gift Aid, and provide guidance to other departments.
- Lead on VAT reporting, submissions and partial exemption calculations.
- Lead on Gift Aid claims.
- Responsible for internal audits for Retail annually and other areas of the organisation as required.
Leadership & Team Management
- Lead, motivate, and develop a team consisting of a Finance Officer, Payroll & Pensions Officer, and two Finance Assistants, plus volunteer support.
- Foster a collaborative, supportive, and valuesdriven team culture.
- Ensure training, development, and clear performance objectives are in place.
- Take an active role in the Operations Leads Group and contribute to cross-functional groups e.g. Data Care, Forum, Job Evaluation.
Systems & Process Improvement
- Oversee the finance systems and champion process improvements.
- Support digital and operational enhancements to streamline financial and payroll workflows.
- Ensure timely and accurate data to support organisational decisionmaking.
PERSON SPECIFICATION Essential (E) or Desirable (D)
Knowledge, qualifications and experience
Qualified or partqualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA) OR strong equivalent experience
Minimum 3 years financial management experience, ideally within the charity sector
Minimum 5 years accounting experience
- Strong technical understanding of accounting, budgeting and financial controls
Understanding of payroll to enable correct accounting treatment
Line management experience
Experience of medium sized accounts package e.g. Sage Line 200c
Gift Aid and Charity VAT experience
- Experience with Charity SORP and trading subsidiaries.
- Knowledge of VAT partial exemption, Gift Aid, charity taxation and payroll and pensions.
Experience of overseeing the running of a payroll
Experience of running a department
Skills and abilities
Proficiency with finance systems within a medium sized organisation.
- Advanced Excel and proficient user of other Microsoft Office apps.
- Excellent leadership skills
- Clear and effective communication, including the ability to explain technical information to a lay audience
- Strong interpersonal skills and ability to collaborate effectively across teams
Skilled in both strategic planning and daily departmental and personal organisation
Ability to problem solve, innovate and use initiative
Skilled user of Sage Line 200c
KEY WORKING RELATIONSHIPS
Director of Finance reports to and provides support to.
Senior Management Team Analysis and advice on budgets and financial performance.
Operations Leads and line managers Analysis and advice on budgets and financial performance. Guidance on financial processes, audit, VAT, Gift Aid etc.
Finance team guide, support, develop and line manage
HR team collaborate to ensure that pay and pensions are processed accurately.
Outside agencies:
External Auditors manage relationship to enable the smooth running of external audits.
Commercial Bank employees relationships to ensure the smooth running of the banking services and the resolution of any problems.
HMRC Working through the HMRC portal to prepare and submit Gift Aid claims and the partial exemption VAT return.
Responding to HMRC VAT, PAYE/NI and Gift Aid queries.
Accounting software representative and Payroll bureaumanaging contracts, overseeing development work and resolving queries.
