Reporting to: Squad Lead (FD) or Accounts Director
Role Description:
The Assistant Finance Director plays a key role in driving and delivering great service and relationships with our clients. The role combines strong technical expertise, effective leadership and people skills whilst also ensuring a focus on driving commercial outcomes for Gravitate.
This role involves maintaining clear oversight of production within the Squad, ensuring that work is delivered on time and to a high standard. Supporting team development through delivering effective feedback and mentoring is also key.
Key Responsibilities
1. Leading and Delivering Client Work
- Lead client meetings, including year-end meetings, remuneration planning, and pre-tax planning discussions for Gravitates typical clients
- Independently manages relationships with small to medium-sized clients, delivering advisory-led conversations with minimal reliance on the Finance Director (FD)
- Provide insightful financial commentary and analysis, including year-end reviews and ongoing performance updates
- Deliver proactive client communication, including regular touchpoints (e.g. quarterly reviews, Loom/video updates)
- Take ownership for welcoming new clients by building strong relationships from the outset by understanding clients’ goals, aspirations and ideals
- Handle client challenges confidently, including service issues and leaning into difficult conversations whilst maintaining a solutions-focused approach.
2. Leading the Team – Workflow, Effectiveness and Quality
- Support and deputise for the FD, ensuring work delivered upwards is accurate, timely, and of a consistently high standard
- Work with the Financial Controller (FC) or Senior Digital Accountant (SDA) to guide and oversee workflow and resource allocation, ensuring all statutory and internal deadlines are met
- Be an effective final review point for assessing the teams output to maintain quality standards, providing confidence to the FD and clients in the accuracy of all work
- Holds team to account and drives a culture of ownership when it comes to the delivery and quality of work
- Leads, mentors, coaching and develops team members in line with their needs and the businesses needs
- Regularly review capacity and effectiveness of the team, make recommendations on how resources can be maximised as well as where recruitment or work reallocation is required.
3. Commerciality and Operational Performance
- Identify opportunities to deliver added-value services to clients to support their goals, either directly or by referring to the FD
- Works to convert new business where required and accurately conveys the service a client requires and can expect
- Monitor client profitability, including identifying and addressing over-servicing
- Take ownership of squads performance metrics (e.g. GP, KPIs), analysing reports, recommending and driving actions to deliver required improvements
- Conduct regular service reviews (e.g. quarterly bookkeeping and new service reviews) to ensure value and efficiency
- Active in looking for ways to improve both service and processes
- Holds team and wider business to account for utilising internal processes and systems (e.g. Karbon) effectively
- Make informed commercial decisions to progress work (e.g. addressing unresponsive clients), using judgement and precedent.
- Proactively identifies and resolve issues, identifying root causes and implementing improvements.
4. Self-Leadership and Ownership
- Proactive in maintaining strong technical expertise to deliver high-quality compliance and advisory services
- Consistent in hitting own personal KPI’s and deliverables
- Monitor and stay informed of regulatory and legislative changes affecting what we do or our clients businesses
- Actively keeps up to date with the evolution of technology and relevant software developments that could impact and benefit our business and our clients
- Take ownership of internal financial responsibilities, including debtors, credit control escalations, and supporting positive cash flow.
- Respond effectively to internal stakeholders, resolving administrative and operational issues.
5. Personal Brand and Profile
- Build and promote a strong personal brand aligned with the firm’s values and reputation
- Look for ways to raise your own personal profile through visibility and contact with existing clients as well as identifying ways to share our services with new prospective clients
- Actively network and develop external relationships to raise profile and generate new business opportunities
- Represent the business professionally in all client and external interactions.
Qualifications and Key Skills:
- ACA, ACCA – 1 – 2 years post qual or qualified by experience (7+ years)
- Organisational and prioritisation skills
- Excellent feedback skills and the ability to develop the team
- Dealing with challenging conversations and delivering positive outcomes
- Ability to manage resource and capacity effective to reduce the risk of non-delivery
- Excellent Client management and communication skills
- Well-honed and developed Leadership skills – flexible leadership style.
- Skilled in maximising performance and capacity
- Utilises a natural coaching and mentoring style to bring the team along
Pay: £44,000.00-£49,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Casual dress
- Company pension
- Flexitime
- Referral programme
- Work from home
Work Location: In person
