About Us
The Finance Directorate plays a leading role in shaping the future of the Council, by being responsive to customer and stakeholder needs through an empowered, flexible and commercially focused team and by aligning resources to provide a professional service appropriate to future organisational needs.
This is in addition to keeping WSCC safe and secure through appropriate financial control. The Directorate will ensure that the basics are done well with emphasis on challenging the County Council to spend its money better, especially in the context of becoming more strategic and forward looking.
About The Job
Salary: £27,254 to £28,598 per annum
Working Pattern: Full-time 37 hours per week
Contract Length: Permanent
Location: County Hall, Chichester with hybrid working opportunities
Interview Date: Week Commencing 7th September
We are seeking an experienced and motivated Senior Finance Assistant to deliver dependable, efficient and adaptable support across the team.
As a Senior Finance Assistant in the Oracle Finance Support Team, you will play a key role in supporting the Council’s Oracle ERP and EPM finance systems. You will collaborate closely with finance professionals, ICT teams and external partners.
In addition, you will have responsibility for wider budget monitoring processes through supporting the provision of control totals and salary monitors, undertaking key reconciliations and processing, and administering purchase orders on behalf of the department.
Experience and Skills
Key Skills:
- Good analytical and numeracy skills in order to monitor and work with budgets and performance data, make sound and accurate calculations and draw related conclusions, and perform other related tasks effectively working with an understanding of finance, accounting and performance management.
- Clear and effective written communication skills to present information for managers, contribute to reports and communicate via email appropriately.
- Good verbal communication skills for answering telephone queries effectively and communicating with managers and team members. Including the ability to provide clear and concise specialist advice and guidance to a range of clients and to communicate varied technical information appropriately and accurately and in ways to best promote understanding.
- Ability to embrace change and adapt to changing situations and new ways of working positively and effectively. Including the ability to learn new systems and processes and contribute towards improving working methods.
- Ability to plan work over the medium term, setting timescales and organising activities in co-ordination with others to deliver objectives to deadlines.
- Good technical skills in the use of MS Excel and some awareness of SAP finance or similar large IT system used for accountancy work (or similar financial service). Sound and accurate overall IT and keyboard skills including for daily office duties such as using e-mail, word processing documents or creating charts or graphs to present information.
Qualifications and/or experience:
- An NVQ4/5, HNC, or HND in finance, business or management, with a demonstrable and substantial element concerning financial and/or performance analysis, monitoring, reporting and management.
- Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) part qualified at intermediate level NVQ 3 or studying towards an equivalent qualification or demonstrable technical and theoretical knowledge related to accountancy at this level.
- Experience of working in a customer orientated environment.
- A good understanding of office systems and practices related to finance, usually demonstrated by relevant experience working in a financial environment.
- Experience providing specialist advice to managers or customers. Including explaining complex financial information or other similar technical information.
For more information on the Key Skills as well as the Qualifications and/or experience required, please refer to the Job Description attached.
Working for us
As well as adding real value to our service users and our communities, as an employer we recognise our employees are central in being able to achieve this. To recognise this we want to help support your development and provide a great place to work ensuring you can fulfil your full potential, have access to a range of benefits including:
- an excellent local government pension scheme
- generous holiday entitlement of 25 days (plus opportunity to buy additional leave)
- a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
- maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
- volunteering opportunities
- training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
- a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see ourStaff discounts page if you are a business looking to offer a discount)
- health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans
For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.
Further information
The reference number for this role is CRS01122.
For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Stuart Eldson Finance Manager (Oracle Finance Support) at [email protected]
For issues or queries regarding your application please contact [email protected].
Internal candidates wishing to apply for this role will be considered for a secondment position. Please can you therefore discuss and agree this with your manager before applying for this position.
To apply, please follow the links below to upload your CV and Cover Letter. In your cover letter please outline your motivations for applying and explaining the skills and experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to 3 years referencing and a health check.
Equity, inclusion and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.
We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page.
