Interim Finance Analyst - Finance (ID: V6bsRGfa)

Position of the Finance Analyst will become a new cross-cutting role with an element of business partnering and an element of corporate reporting finance business partnering for Finance and Resources, one of the council’s smaller directorates. Corporate financial reporting, both internal and external.

Key Responsibilities of a Finance Analyst:

• Undertake the preparation of budgets, to assist service areas with budget projections and provide critical challenges on a monthly basis, or as required
• Ensure a system of adequate internal controls exists with respect of financial matters
• Ensure that accurate financial returns, to both internal and external bodies including CIPFA, are made on a timely basis
• Advise on the financial viability of new or existing projects and policy proposals
• Liaison with both Internal and External Auditors
• Provide advice to service managers on financial matters, including interpretation and compliance with financial regulations
• Support month-end and year-end processes, preparing performance and other reports
• Keep the Council’s asset register up to date.
• Support schools and their bursars in their roles and their financial development needs
• Support the development and maintenance of a full range of buy-back services for schools through effective SLA arrangements in a customer-focused way.

Qualifications:

• AAT qualified, part qualified CCAB or CII + ongoing study OR equivalent experience

Knowledge:

• Oracle Financials reporting Business Objects and ADI
• Accounting principles, policies and practices
• Financial accounting and control
• Local government funding arrangements
• Statutory and regulatory reporting requirements in banking
• Capital accounting and regulation funding
• A working knowledge of project management methodology
• Banking rules and regulations
• Sound understanding of income tax issues

Experience:

• Investigating changes to accounting rules and areas of potential breach, proposing and implementing viable solutions.
• Producing briefings and reports on specific issues for senior managers. Using information to support arguments and recommendations and able to present complex information verbally as well as in written form. Can produce presentations on specific issues and deliver them to managers and other finance staff
• Identifying major issues and proposing solutions
• Experience with working with managers to identify potential corrective action in response to significant variances, and to develop appropriate action plans.
• Experience of providing advice and support to council service departments whilst at the same time monitoring financial activities and standing on behalf of the Operational Director of Finance.
• Experience in using banking systems
• Experience in local government across both the Housing General Fund and HRA
• Experience in capital year-end
• Analysing information to identify trends and sound inferences from the information. Investigate issues that arise. Able to investigate more open-ended problems
• Using complex financial and non-financial information to project future outcomes and appraise options
• Championing financial control issues, identified potential problems and proposed solutions
• Using Oracle Financial Systems
• Project management
• Extracting data from systems, manipulating and providing information in a variety of formats
• Giving presentations and training to a wide audience
• Completing and submitting government returns
• Preparation of accounting statements
• Income Tax issues / P11D / CIS / VAT / TMA.

Skills & Abilities:

• Strong IT skills including Microsoft packages or equivalent (e.g. G Suite).
• Good organisational skills and ability to get staff from across the organisation to provide information promptly
• Strong data analysis skills
• Ability to produce written reports collating financial information from across the organisation
• Apply complex technical rules where required, is aware of changes and can explain the impact of them
• Identify potential budget issues and bring them to the attention of the relevant budget manager or finance manager. Takes responsibility for larger areas of budget development. Undertakes analysis on behalf of budget managers or finance managers
• Analyse monitoring information and identify variances and trends, identifying the impact those trends will have, producing forecasts and projections
• Support budget managers and investigate more complicated issues
• Make recommendations for decisions by senior officers.
• Take decisions on open-ended issues with guidance from the line manager and be able to clearly explain reasoning behind decisions taken
• Train other users and communicate best practice advice
• Use financial systems to draw out relevant financial information
• Use a variety of graphs and tables to present data within reports
• Produce clear written documents explaining technical and finance issues following basic report writing principles

What's involved with this role:

• Interim Finance Analyst - City: WEMBLEY, LONDON
• Pay Rate: £313.64 per day PAYE
• Hours per week: 36 Monday - Friday, normal working hours
• This opening assignment is for 3-4 months