Financial Accountant

Let us introduce ourselves…  

It is the people at Shakespeare Martineau that make us so special. By understanding what our people want, giving them the support they need, recognising everyone’s contribution and realising the unique power of teams; together we win.   As a firm we are focused on proactively building and developing diverse teams, bringing different backgrounds, personalities and perspectives together. We play to our strengths, pushing ourselves to be consistently better than yesterday and deliver amazing solutions for our clients. We empower our teams with a high degree of individual responsibility; we self-manage and encourage everyone to be responsible for their own learning, knowing it makes us even better at what we do!    

We believe in trusting our people to make the right decisions for themselves from how you dress to how, when and where you work – we focus on outputs.  

The opportunity:

We are currently building a Financial Reporting & Analysis (‘FR&A’) team that will provide accurate, timely and relevant financial and management information and financial regulatory control support to the Firm, our Business Units and Central teams, together with the provision of insightful finance business partner support.

We now have a brand new opportunity for a Financial Accountant to join the Financial Control team within the FR&A team.

We’re looking for a confident individual with a proven track-record of working in a similar role, to strengthen our financial and management accounting expertise, to provide robust, timely, accurate management and financial information, to help improve accounting controls, provide MI commentary and deliver operational cost and capital spend forecasting.

You will be someone who, not only has the ability to deliver to tight internal and regulatory timetables in a change environment, but who is also capable of expanding to meet future business reporting needs as a result of growth and change driven by our future business success.

Your key duties will be:

• producing and delivering the monthly and annual TB to the Financial Controller together with relevant analysis, schedules, variance analysis and commentary on key movements
• producing and delivering the Firm’s Main Board and Business Unit monthly management accounts and associated monthly reports, C-Suite monthly MI and other relevant Business Operations team, Office Head and Regional Head monthly MI
• assisting the Financial Controller in the delivery of the Firm’s Main Board monthly management account commentaries and ad hoc relevant analysis and commentary, as required
• to feed into Business Unit and Growth Board BOP reporting, monthly and quarterly
• taking ownership of the general ledger, management and financial accounting processes and, linking up and working with other teams e.g. AP, improve ledger integrity, monthly accounting processes and financial and regulatory control
• producing monthly balance sheet reconciliations, Fixed Asset reporting and reconciliation control and assisting the Financial Controller with the current quarterly WIP valuation process
• VAT reporting; including production of the quarterly VAT return and monthly payment schedule and presenting to the Financial Controller for review and sign off
• having ownership and delivery of the ONS surveys
• support the Financial Controller in the production of the annual financial statements, audit schedules and analysis. Assisting the FC during audit visits
• delivering quarterly operational cost and capital spend forecasting to the Financial Controller liaising with senior budget holders
• the line management of a recently qualified assistant in the team; this includes assistance in the allocation of workload, reviewing work and providing supervision including mentoring and development support
• providing additional ad hoc financial reporting support as required by the Financial Controller, other members of the FR&A team, the partnership, CFO and CEO
• engaging and supporting the implementation of a new IT practice management system (‘PMS’) and IBM COGnos Analytics

Skills and experience you will need:

• to be a qualified accountant with one of the following qualifications (ACA/ACCA/CIMA)
• to have demonstrable experience in a similar role, preferably in the legal or professional services sector
• to be comfortable working across a number of IT platforms, intermediate to advanced experience in Excel is essential
• demonstrable staff management experience
• strong technical knowledge of group consolidations and reporting

Desirable experience:

• experience of working within the legal sector or other professional services business
• IBM COGnos Analytics experience

Key competencies you will need:

• excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to build rapport, credibility and impact quickly at all levels
• flexibility and the ability to operate in a changing environment
• to be enthusiastic, positive and have a ‘can do’ approach
• a strong attention to detail with high levels of accuracy
• the attitude and ability to meet deadlines
• to be a commercially aware self-starter, pro-active with the ability to work in a team and comfortable working at both a strategic and detailed operational level

How we work:

We embrace agile working and offer a blended approach to where and how we work.

We appreciate that people have different needs and preferences and we’re keen to be flexible, after all, we value what you do, not where you do it.

We have hubs in Birmingham, Leicester, London, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Solihull, Stratford-upon-Avon and Sheffield.  This role will be predominantly home based with travel as required into Birmingham or one of our other West Midlands hubs.

Please be aware, for some vacancies, where we receive high numbers of applications we may need to bring the close date forward.

Due to the nature of the work undertaken, confirmation of employment will be subject to a variety of checks which will be carried out once an offer of employment is accepted. Details of the checks can be found here.

Shakespeare Martineau is a committed equal opportunities employer. We seek to attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures. We value and respect individuality and encourage a culture within our business where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths and experiences. Everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.