Senior Accountant

Job Description

Position Title - Senior Accountant

Department - Finance

Reporting Line - Reports to the Finance Manager

Role Purpose

The Senior Accountant will be responsible for supporting the organisation's financial reporting, revenue accounting, project financial management, investor reporting, reconciliations, financial controls, and audit requirements across multiple entities and jurisdictions.

The role will work closely with Finance, Project, Commercial, Operations, Investment, and other teams to ensure accurate financial information, effective financial controls, timely reporting, and strong finance business partnering.

Key Responsibilities

1. Revenue & Receivables

• Manage revenue accounting and ensure revenue is accurately recognised in the appropriate accounting periods.
• Maintain revenue schedules and perform revenue reconciliations.
• Monitor invoicing, collections, receivables, and outstanding balances.
• Work with commercial and project teams to resolve billing and collection issues.
• Monitor revenue performance against budgets, milestones, forecasts, and contractual expectations.
• Maintain appropriate supporting documentation and reconciliations for all bad debt provisions and write-offs.
• Review contracts for potential deals to ensure revenue, tax requirements, billing terms, and project milestones are clearly defined and adequately documented to support accurate revenue recognition and external audit requirements. 

2. Project Finance & Budget Management

• Set up new projects in the finance/ERP system, including project codes, budgets, cost centres, and relevant financial parameters.
• Monitor project budgets against actual expenditure and revenue.
• Prepare regular Budget vs Actual (BVA) reports and variance analysis.
• Work with project teams to explain significant variances and identify potential cost overruns.
• Support project forecasting, including projected costs, revenue, and project completion positions.
• Ensure project costs are correctly coded, allocated, and supported.
• Support project close-out and final financial reconciliations.

3. Investor Reporting & Business Partnering

• Prepare monthly, quarterly, and annual investor reporting in line with agreed requirements.
• Maintain investor reconciliations, schedules, and supporting documentation.
• Coordinate with internal teams to obtain information required for investor reporting.
• Respond to investor financial queries and ensure timely resolution of reporting issues.
• Maintain strong finance business partnerships with investors and relevant stakeholders.
• Support preparation of ad hoc investor analysis and financial information requests.

4. Financial Reporting & Reconciliations

• Support monthly, quarterly, and annual financial close processes.
• Prepare and review receivables, intercompany, revenue, project, investor, and balance sheet reconciliations.
• Prepare and post appropriate month-end journals, including Revenue, accruals, prepayments, provisions, and reclassifications.
• Investigate and clear aged or unexplained reconciling items.
• Support management reporting, financial analysis, and forecasting.

5. Finance Systems & Workflows

• Manage project creation and other finance master data within the ERP/accounting system.
• Manage finance approval workflows and ensure transactions follow the appropriate approval processes.
• Support onboarding of new finance users and coordinate system access and permissions.
• Resolve system, workflow, and accounting process issues in collaboration with Finance and IT.
• Support finance system improvements, automation, and process optimization.
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce manual processes.

6. Audit, Controls & Compliance

• Support external, statutory, internal, tax, investor, and other audits across multiple jurisdictions.
• Prepare audit schedules, reconciliations, and supporting documentation.
• Coordinate responses to audit queries and track outstanding requests.
• Ensure compliance with finance policies, accounting standards, approval requirements, and internal controls.
• Identify control gaps and support implementation of corrective actions.
• Maintain an audit-ready finance environment.

7. Finance Business Partnership - Revenue

• Build strong working relationships with Commercial, Project, Operations, and other relevant teams to support effective revenue management.
• Partner with relevant stakeholders to ensure accurate revenue forecasting, recognition, invoicing, and collection monitoring.
• Provide financial insights and guidance on revenue performance, variances, risks, and opportunities.
• Proactively identify and resolve issues affecting revenue recognition, billing, collections, and overall revenue performance.

8. Support on Tax Compliance 

• Ensure timely and accurate tax compliance across entities and jurisdictions, including VAT, withholding tax, and statutory filings.
• Ensure tax related transactions are accurately recorded and booked in the appropriate ledgers and accounts 
• Review transactions, contracts, and payments for applicable tax implications and ensure appropriate deductions and remittances.
• Support tax audits, assessments, and queries from tax authorities and external advisors.
• Identify and escalate potential tax risks arising from projects, contracts, and cross border transactions.

Key Deliverables

• Accurate and timely revenue recognition and revenue reporting.
• Revenue and collections monitoring.
• Project BVA and financial performance reporting.
• Monthly, quarterly, and annual investor reporting.
• Timely and accurate financial reconciliations.
• Effective month-end and year-end close.
• Timely project setup and financial system maintenance.
• Audit schedules and support across multiple jurisdictions.
• Effective finance approval workflows and user onboarding.
• Strong financial controls and compliance.
• Continuous improvement and automation of finance processes.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Commerce, or a related field.
• CPA, ACCA, ACA, CIMA, or equivalent professional qualification.
• 6-8 years of relevant accounting/finance experience.
• Strong experience in financial accounting, revenue recognition, reconciliations, and financial reporting.
• Experience with project accounting, budget monitoring, and BVA reporting.
• Experience preparing investor or external stakeholder reporting.
• Experience supporting audits across multiple entities or jurisdictions.
• Strong Excel and accounting/ERP systems skills.
• Experience with process improvement, automation, or finance system implementations is an advantage.

Key Competencies

• Excellent financial communication skills, with the ability to analyse and interpret numbers, clearly articulate the story behind financial performance, and communicate complex financial information, trends, variances, risks, and opportunities effectively to both finance and non-finance stakeholders through strong written and verbal communication. 
• Strong technical accounting and analytical skills.
• Excellent attention to detail and accuracy.
• Strong commercial and business partnering mindset..
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making ability.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines.
• High level of ownership, accountability, and integrity.
• Proactive approach to identifying and resolving financial issues.
• Continuous improvement mindset.