Management Accountant

• Reporting to the finance manager, the Management Accountant has responsibility for completion of various weekly, monthly and quarterly tasks as well as involvement in larger projects such as year end/budgeting.
• Working collaboratively with team members in Cardiff and London, including the finance team of 5 based in Cardiff and in a long established office of nearly 40 staff members.

Client Details

Our client is a long standing professional services company with offices throughout the UK and also internationally.

Description

Reporting to the Cardiff-based Finance Manager the Management Accountant role is based in our Cardiff office. The Management Accountant has responsibility for completion of various weekly, monthly and quarterly tasks as well as involvement in larger projects such as year end/budgeting.

Working collaboratively with other team members in Cardiff and London, responsibilities will include:

• Preparation of the monthly management accounts, including: maintenance & posting of accruals and prepayments; review of profit & loss account headings, involvement in the month end close process. Checking monthly reports showing detailed firmwide and divisional data.
• Production of monthly data including reports showing actual expenditure versus budgeted expenditure for budget holders around the firm.
• Preparing balance sheet reconciliations for review by the Finance Manager.
• Preparation and submission of quarterly UK and Irish VAT returns, European Sales List submissions and Intermediaries reporting. Providing support to the team on the correct VAT treatment when posting expenses.
• Involvement in the calculation of consultants' fees & commission payments at specified times throughout the year and calculation of client discounts at the end of the financial year.
• Accounting for fixed assets, loans and property transactions including service cost recharges.
• Allocation of monthly payroll costs and analysis thereon.
• Involvement in quarterly forecasting and segmental reporting exercises
• Provide support to the Accounts Payable (AP) and expenses processes undertaken by the Assistant Accountant and Accounts Assistant.
• Identifying and driving forward the implementation of process improvements in terms of efficiencies and the control environment.
• Annual reallocation of Partner associated costs to current accounts.
• Maintaining fee earner details in Elite 3E, including liaising with the relevant Practice Group Head to determine charge-out rates for their new starters. Provide support for the annual review of charge-out rates.
• Preparation of data for monthly, quarterly and annual legal sector/office of national statistics surveys.
• Maintenance of nominal ledger codes with responsibility for setting up/closing accounts and maintenance of the firm's chart of accounts.

The Management Accountant will also be involved in other ad-hoc projects as and when they arise.

Profile

The Management Accountant will be a professional, self-motivated and positive individual who is able to demonstrate:

• An ability to actively engage in the business, through strong verbal communication skills and a pro-active approach to identifying and putting in place process improvements to ensure the needs of the partnership are met;
• Excellent organisational skills with a proven track record in forward planning and managing their own time to ensure deadlines for a wide variety of activities are met in a timely and effective manner;
• Track record of achievement and development in similar role; a good understanding of practice management / accounting systems, MS Excel and ideally database query and interrogation techniques; and excellent attention to detail, a focus on accuracy and a track record of delivering high quality outputs, balanced with pragmatic approach to meeting deadlines; and an enthusiastic and flexible approach with a 'can do' attitude.
• Understanding of management accounting processes across several entities and operating under different currencies.
• Have strong IT skills and excellent working knowledge of MS Excel data extraction and analysis techniques, leading Practice Management / Accounting package (e.g. Elite/SAP) and Microsoft applications (particularly development of financial models in Excel including Lookup, Pivot and Chart functions). Experience of using Microsoft Reporting Services or similar applications would be helpful.

Job Offer

The full time position offers:

• Progression opportunities
• Bonus Schemes
• Flexible Working
• Free Gym membership
• 25 days holiday
• Competitive pension