Finance Assistant

• Ensure accurate, reliable, and efficient processing of transactions within areas such as purchase ledger, sales ledger, cashbook, credit cards, and direct debits for all group entities in a timely manner and in line with agreed approval and authorisation limits
• Perform monthly reconciliations of these transactional areas, process any adjustment journals to finance systems and fully investigate any anomalies, attaching all supporting documentation as required for audit and control purposes
• Respond promptly to all internal and external stakeholder processing queries on a daily basis in an efficient and effective manner and ensure all queries are followed up and resolved in a timely manner
• Reconcile supplier statements to the general ledger on a monthly basis, fully investigating any anomalies, taking necessary corrective action to clear outstanding items and resolve any payment/authorisation queries to ensure finance records are accurate, reliable and fully up to date
• Take a proactive approach in reviewing outstanding purchase orders, receipts and invoice matches, taking appropriate action to ensure outstanding items are genuine, accurate, reliable and not duplicated and following up with relevant stakeholders to resolve any queries and close outstanding items in a timely manner
• Maintain a strong and operationally suitable set of financial controls and instil a culture of compliance and control as part of the wider Finance team
• Provide a user-friendly, customer-focused and reliable service at all times, consistently demonstrating a ‘can-do’ attitude
• Fully embrace a culture of collaborative working and continuous improvement, taking responsibility for ensuring quality of work is of an expected standard
• Work collaboratively with other members of the Finance team to achieve the overall aims of the directorate, ensuring workloads are covered and skills shared

• Processing the monthly payroll from start to finish for over 500 employees
• Maintain pay records in i-Trent
• Support internal users of the iTrent system, providing advice and solving problems as required
• Ensuring effective salary calculations for all aspects of pay and deductions including starters, leavers, SSP, SMP, SPP, bonus, overtime, season ticket loans, child care vouchers, expense etc. Making sure that all authorisations, payroll controls, payroll compliance and regulatory requirements are met
• To work closely with the HR department to ensure that changes are correctly recorded. To proactively identify process inefficiencies and collaborate towards an improved and more productive process that enhances both employees and managers experience
• Undertake payroll reconciliation to ensure balances are as expected and liaise with finance accounting assistant if a correction is required
• Undertake other ad hoc tasks on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis as required

• Act as cover for the Rent and Retail Finance Assistant
• Prepare the weekly Retail Shops Performance reports
• Ensure the weekly rent debit run is processed
• Act as an advisor and support to the housing teams as they undertake their duties in relation to managing tenancy and lease agreements
• Assist in the accounting processes for complex/technical areas of the organisation, for example rent accounting, prepaid cards, charity shop accounting, fixed assets, component accounting, rent setting and service charges
• Support the Group Financial Controller with the annual statutory accounting processes relating to rent accounting
• Contribute to internal and external audit activities ensuring that any associated recommendations influence practice and are implemented as appropriate
• Perform other duties as may be reasonably required

• Proven experience of processing high volume financial transactions on a computerised Finance system in an accurate, efficient and timely manner
• Proven experience of maintaining and enhancing a strong set of financial controls
• Housing sector experience or a strong ability to adapt to a complex and regulated sector

• Knowledge of double entry bookkeeping and journal posting
• Ability to reconcile account
• Strong customer service, relationship building and problem-solving skills
• Fully embrace collaborative working and continuous improvement culture
• Committed to undertake formal accountancy qualification/training

• Educated to A-level standard or equivalent
• Potentially studying or aiming to study AAT, ACCA, CIMA or CIPFA

• Proficient user of MS Office including PowerPoint, Intermediate Excel with good working knowledge of PIVOT tables, Data summarisation tools such as sumifs, countifs, etc.

• Flexible-working
• Life Assurance
• Employee Wellbeing App/ Mental Health Support
• Online GP Service
• Cycle to work
• Opportunities for self-development with over 60 courses available to self-enrol
• Opportunities to volunteer in our Charity Retail Stores or on our Befriending Program

Octavia