Management accountant /Assistant Finance Controller

The Group IS Finance Team accounts for Atkins’ substantial annual spend on IS, supporting the Group IS management team to prepare financial plans and understand and manage variances. The role is part of a team of six who are responsible for providing financial support to Group IS budget holders, including preparing financial plans, monthly accounts and financial reports, and financial support for management decisions (business cases).

Key Deliverables/Responsibilities

• Work with Group IS budget holders to prepare annual budgets and quarterly re-forecasts and supporting analysis through understanding and challenging the current cost base.
• Ensure the cost base for the Group IS UK cost centres is accounted for correctly, which includes invoices being coded appropriately and monthly accruals, prepayments and transfers being processed accurately.
• Prepare management accounts and balance sheet reconciliations for Group IS UK cost centres.
• Work closely with accountants in other regions to ensure that accounting for local Group IS cost centres is in line with group accounting policies.
• Analyse actual variances to budget/forecast and work closely with budget holders to understand, explain and anticipate financial performance.
• Provide ad hoc advice on financial matters, eg coding purchase orders, setting up jobs, extracting information from the Group’s information systems.
• Support preparation of business cases to ensure the Group gets maximum benefit from planned investments.
• Other ad hoc analysis and financial support as needed.

Experience Required

Essential:

Considerable experiences of:

• Preparing budgets and forecasts and of management reporting in a plc environment. 
• Using Microsoft Excel, including use of pivot tables and lookups. (Macro skills are not required.)
• Supporting non-financial budget holders to prepare and manage their budgets.

Desirable:

• Experience of using JDEdwards and/or Hyperion Financial Manager.
• Experience of working in a rapidly changing environment and of anticipating and responding to changing customer needs.