Management Accountant

Optimum Recruitment Group are proud of be working exclusively with our exciting growth client based in Wakefield to seek an experienced Management Accountant to join the team.

Reporting to the Financial Controller, this is a newly created role. This is not a pure month end role, we are seeking someone who has a strong commercial skill set, who has great analytical capability and can support the FC and CFO with the budgeting, forecasting and the financial modelling processes.

Your key responsibilities include:

• Preparing accurate and timely monthly management accounts, including P&L analysis, accruals, prepayments and relevant balance sheet reconciliations.
• Producing and developing reporting across all sales channels and other areas of the business.
• Analysing actual performance against budget, forecast and prior periods, identifying and explaining key variances.
• Providing meaningful commercial insight rather than simply reporting the numbers.
• Supporting the annual budgeting and regular reforecasting processes.
• Developing detailed P&L, balance sheet and cash-flow forecasts alongside the FC and CFO.
• Supporting scenario modelling and sensitivity analysis to help management understand the financial impact of different trading and operational assumptions.
• Working with operational managers to understand performance and challenge assumptions where appropriate.
• Analysing sales, margins, costs and profitability across all channels and business activities.
• Supporting the month-end close and ensuring reporting deadlines are consistently achieved.
• Working closely with the Financial Accountant to ensure management reporting is supported by robust underlying financial information.
• Working with the Transactional Finance Manager where issues within the ledgers affect management reporting or month-end.
• Working closely with the Systems/Data team to improve the quality, consistency and automation of financial and management information, including reconciliation between a bespoke operational system and Sage 200.
• Helping develop more efficient and scalable reporting processes and reduce reliance on manual spreadsheet-based reporting.
• Supporting the year-end and audit requirements where required.
• Assisting with ad-hoc commercial analysis and projects for the CFO and FC.
• Providing direction, supporting the development to the Assistant Accountants, delegating appropriate month-end and management accounting activities and reviewing their work.
• Ensuring work is appropriately distributed across the team so you can focus on higher-value analysis, forecasting and business partnering rather than undertaking all the detailed preparation work personally.

This is an exciting time to join the business as it navigates a period of growth and change and will allow you to be involved in reshaping the finance function moving forwards.

You must be able to demonstrate the following skills and experiences:

• Strong management accounting experience in a reasonably complex business.
• ACA, ACCA or CIMA qualified, part-qualified or equivalent experience.
• Strong month-end and management accounts experience.
• Practical budgeting and forecasting experience.
• Strong Excel and financial modelling skills.
• Ability to analyse financial information and explain the commercial story behind the numbers.
• Confidence working with non-finance stakeholders and challenging assumptions.
• Good understanding of P&L, Balance Sheet and cash-flow relationships.
• Strong systems aptitude and an interest in improving/automating reporting.
• Ability to work independently, prioritise effectively and take ownership of deadlines.
• Multi-site or high-volume commercial experience would be advantageous.
• Sage 200 experience would be useful but isn't essential.

Salary c 45,000 - 55,000 plus benefits depending on skills and experiences.