About 650NED
650NED is a high-touch, high-service level outsourced finance function for growing businesses.
We don't operate like a traditional accountancy practice where one person is responsible for hundreds of clients and has limited contact with each one.
We deliberately work with a relatively small number of clients, but we work with them closely.
Our clients rely heavily on us. We become a genuine extension of their business and, in many cases, effectively operate as their internal finance team and therefore get invited to all the staff days and parties as their internal team do.
That means understanding far more than how to produce a set of accounts. We need to understand how the business works, what matters to the owners, what's happening operationally and what the numbers are actually telling us.
Our work ranges from bookkeeping and management accounts through to cashflow forecasting, financial analysis and fractional FD support.
We're now looking for an experienced Finance Manager to become the technical backbone of our client delivery team.
This isn't a role for someone who wants to produce a set of management accounts, send them off and forget about them.
We want someone who wants to understand why the numbers are what they are.
If a reconciliation is £179.43 out, you should be the sort of person who finds it mildly offensive until you've worked out why.
The role
You'll sit between our bookkeeping team and our Fractional FD, taking ownership of much of the day-to-day financial management and reporting across a small portfolio of high-touch clients.
You won't have hundreds of clients competing for your attention.
Instead, you'll know your clients properly.
You'll understand their businesses, get to know the people within them and become someone they genuinely rely on as part of their team.
You'll be responsible for making sure the underlying numbers are right, month-end happens properly, reporting is useful and issues are investigated rather than simply carried forward.
A major part of the role will be taking complex and technical delivery work away from the MD/ FD, while also becoming the first point of escalation for our bookkeeping team.
You'll also work directly with clients, so we're looking for someone who combines excellent technical ability with patience, confidence, professionalism and a sense of humour.
Some clients will know their numbers inside out.
Others will ask you a technical question while simultaneously clicking through six different screens despite you asking them not to touch anything.
You need to be comfortable with both.
What you'll be doing
Month-end and management reporting
- Own the month-end process for allocated clients
- Produce accurate monthly management accounts and reporting packs
- Review balance sheets and ensure accounts are fully reconciled
- Investigate unusual movements, discrepancies and variances
- Maintain supporting schedules and month-end working papers
- Produce cashflow forecasts, budgets and other financial analysis
- Improve the quality and usefulness of client reporting
- Make sure issues are actually resolved rather than becoming mysterious brought-forward balances forever
Reconciliations and financial control
This is a particularly important part of the role.
Some of our clients have high transaction volumes, multiple systems and complex reconciliations. We need someone with an exceptional eye for detail.
You'll be expected to:
- Perform and review complex reconciliations
- Reconcile data between different systems and source records
- Identify missing, duplicated or incorrectly recorded transactions
- Investigate historic discrepancies
- Follow transactions through from source to accounting treatment
- Question numbers that don't look right
- Maintain clear audit trails and supporting documentation
- Get to the bottom of differences rather than accepting a balancing adjustment because it's easier
We are looking for a genuine reconciliation king or queen.
You should be naturally investigative, highly organised and slightly obsessive about getting things right.
Client relationships
This is a high-service business and client relationships are a major part of the role.
You're not simply responsible for producing the numbers. You'll become part of your clients' extended teams.
That means:
- Building strong relationships with business owners and their internal teams
- Understanding how each client's business actually operates
- Becoming someone clients feel comfortable calling when something doesn't look right
- Answering accounting, reporting and systems queries
- Explaining financial information in normal human language
- Helping clients navigate their accounting systems
- Proactively identifying problems rather than waiting for clients to discover them
- Dealing confidently with very different personalities and levels of financial understanding
- Knowing when to patiently explain something for the third time
- Knowing when something genuinely needs escalating to the FD
We want our clients to feel like they have their own finance team, not like they've outsourced their accounts to an external provider.
Supporting the wider finance team
You'll become the first technical escalation point for our bookkeeping team.
You'll:
- Review work and identify errors or areas for improvement
- Help the team resolve more complicated bookkeeping and accounting issues
- Coach team members and help develop their technical knowledge
- Improve processes, checklists and controls
- Help create consistency across client delivery
- Reduce the number of routine technical questions that need to reach the FD
We're not looking for someone who simply fixes mistakes themselves. We want someone who can explain why something is wrong and help the person understand it for next time.
This is a hands-on role.
We're a growing outsourced finance team, which means this role won't consist exclusively of management accounts, reporting and review.
While we already have bookkeeping support within the team, there will initially be some hands-on bookkeeping and transactional finance work within your client portfolio too.
That could include:
- Bank and balance sheet reconciliations
- Transaction processing
- Correcting posting errors
- VAT-related work
- Cleaning up ledgers
- Investigating historic balances
- Getting into the detail of a client's accounting system when something needs sorting
As we grow, we expect to add further bookkeeping resource and move more of this work down through the team.
However, we're looking for someone who is comfortable rolling their sleeves up in the meantime.
We don't believe in rigidly saying, "that's below my pay grade".
If something needs doing for a client, we get it done, while also building the right team and processes so that everyone's time is ultimately spent at the appropriate level.
You need to be equally comfortable producing a management accounts pack, investigating a horrible reconciliation and jumping into Xero to fix the transactions that caused it.
If you're looking for a role where you only review work prepared by other people, this probably isn't the right one.
If you enjoy understanding a client's finance function from the transactions upwards and taking ownership of making the whole thing work properly, it probably is.
About you
You'll probably be qualified, part-qualified or qualified by experience.
We're much more interested in what you can actually do than the letters after your name.
You'll have strong experience in areas such as:
- Management accounts
- Month-end close
- Balance sheet reconciliations
- Cashflow forecasting
- Accruals and prepayments
- VAT
- Accounting systems
- Excel
- Investigating accounting discrepancies
- Working across multiple businesses or entities either in industry or practice
Experience within practice, outsourced finance, fractional finance or a multi-client environment would be particularly useful.
The person we're looking for
Technical ability matters enormously, but personality matters too.
You will be:
Obsessive about accuracy.
You notice when something doesn't make sense and you want to know why.
Naturally investigative.
You're not satisfied with "that's what the system says." You'll trace it back and work out whether the system is actually right.
Exceptionally good at reconciliations.
Give you two reports that supposedly contain the same information but don't agree and you're strangely excited to find out why.
Comfortable taking ownership.
You don't need someone standing over you telling you what needs doing next.
Excellent with clients.
You're comfortable becoming a trusted part of someone's business rather than maintaining a traditional accountant/client relationship.
Patient.
(Not so) occasionally very patient.
Commercial and pragmatic.
Being accurate doesn't mean spending six hours investigating a 3p difference. You understand materiality and can balance perfection with getting things done.
Professional, but human.
We're serious about the quality of our work. We're significantly less serious about ourselves.
A sense of humour is essential.
What this role isn't
This isn't a traditional accounts-production role where you process information and pass it upwards.
You're the person in the middle who makes the whole finance function work.
Our bookkeepers should be able to come to you when they're stuck.
Our clients should trust you as if you were part of their own finance team.
And our FD should be able to look at your work and know that if you say the balance sheet is right, it's right.
Working arrangements
We're happy to offer hybrid working because we'd rather recruit the right person than restrict ourselves geographically.
However, this is a collaborative role and we want you to become a genuine part of the team, so we'd expect you to work from the office at least 1 – 2 days per week.
We're in a funny stage of growth, and we'll be honest, this isn't a full time role yet, but could become one very quickly, so we'll consider both part time and full time in the recruitment process.
Why join us?
You'll have the opportunity to work across genuinely interesting businesses without being expected to manage an enormous portfolio.
You'll get to know your clients properly, understand their businesses and see the impact of the work you do.
You'll have autonomy and direct client exposure, while still having senior FD support when something genuinely complex arises.
You'll also have the opportunity to shape how our finance team operates as we grow.
Most importantly, we want someone who enjoys doing excellent work with people they actually like working with.
If you're the person who has ever opened a balance sheet, spotted something strange and then accidentally lost an hour because you had to know what caused it, we'd very much like to hear from you.
Pay: £35,000.00-£50,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Casual dress
- Company pension
- Free parking
- On-site gym
- On-site parking
- Sick pay
- Work from home
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Newport Pagnell MK16
