Finance Assistant

Job description

Job title: Finance Assistant

Job purpose:

To support the day-to-day administration of finance processes and transactions ensuring that financial policies, procedures and controls are maintained.

Reports to: Finance Director

Directorate:

The Finance team is responsible for the maintenance of controls and procedures for the accurate record keeping, custody of assets, completeness of income, credit control, fraud prevention, management and support on the internal budget framework and compliance with regulatory framework.

The Membership team is responsible for the maintenance, quality, protection, and accuracy of member data, reporting of member and subscriber information to the business, and the renewal and retention process of the membership base. 

1. Duties and key responsibilities

• Processing of purchase ledger invoices including organising invoice approvals, and monitoring timing of payments and weekly payment run processes. Responsible for entering of BACS payments into the accounting system
• Managing the timing and preparation of payments for the legal directorate (claims and case payments) and accurate recording of individual payments
• Responsible for Credit Control producing aged debtor reports and statements of account at month end
• Production of invoices and allocation of payments to the ledger
• Reviewing expense claims, particularly the Council claims, logging them and providing payment statements
• Assisting the finance team with a variety of departmental administration tasks including bank deposits, general administration and filing
• Assisting with the membership payment reconciliation processes
• Provide the above service for the Local Optical Committee Support Unit (LOCSU) (a related company) through the provision of the outsourced accounting services to them. 

2. General responsibilities

• Be proactive in keeping up to date with developments affecting your work at hand and maintain and improve personal competence through continuous professional development
• Operate within organisational policies, codes of conduct and practice and work collaboratively with staff across the association
• Contribute to team meetings and organisational priorities, strategic goals and performance targets
• Be flexible and carry out other associated duties as may arise, develop or be assigned within the broad remit of the post.

3. Person specification

Experience and knowledge

• Experience of bookkeeping and/or understanding of double entry accounting
• Experience working in a similar role or having held some similar responsibilities.

Skills and abilities

• Up to date IT skills including Excel skills (intermediate excel skills a plus)
• Ability to organise and prioritise work
• Plan and manage workload, meet deadlines and respond to unplanned demands.

Education/training

• [A level Maths desirable]
• [Educated to GCSE level]
• Part-qualified ACCA student - completion of the F5 and F7 papers an asset. AAT qualified also considered

Personal attributes and other requirements

• Professional manner, confident and self-motivated
• Attention to detail and accuracy
• Enthusiastic and willingness to be flexible in achieving project outcomes
• Strong interpersonal skills.

June 2019