Finance Manager

Itad is a leading international development consultancy providing technical advice to governments, foundations, multilateral agencies and non-profits on how to maximise the impact of their investments. We have a 37-year track record of providing our clients with the information and insight they need to make development work smarter, produce better results and improve people’s lives.

Our knowledge and expertise are grouped around Practice areas including Fragile and Conflict-affected Settings (FCAS), Human Development, Inclusive Growth, and Governance and Institutional Strengthening.   We continue to grow in size, commercial performance and professional reputation and we are increasingly recognised as a global leader with a diverse client base including international development agencies and philanthropic foundations.

Department Overview

Our Finance Team consists of 8 people and aims to be a true business partner, sitting in the heart of the business, and providing business support and technical expertise to safeguard the company’s financial assets, aid decision making, and support future growth.

We achieve this through two primary functions.  The Central Finance function provides business support to the Board in the form of financial reporting and commentary, financial projections, and technical advice.  With the primary focus on financial accounting, its purpose is to safeguard Itad’s financial assets, and ensure statutory, tax, and filing compliance, maintain a robust internal control environment, promote best practice throughout the business, and provide technical expertise to internal customers.

The Finance Business Partnering function provides business support to the Practices to analyse, explain and predict Revenue and Gross Profit performance, to aid commercial decisions. Finance also contributes to the fulfilment of financial reporting contractual obligations to the customers.

The Role

The role will sit across both functions – overseeing the Central Finance function while also providing support to the wider business through involvement in the Finance Business Partnering function.

Key areas of responsibility:

• Line management and development of 2 finance administrators and 2 management accountants.
• Management of the Central Finance function including review of management accounts and reconciliations, and oversight of treasury management, purchase ledger, expenses, weekly payment runs etc.
• Review of corporate reporting, including our VAT returns.
• Assisting in the compilation of the Exco & Board reports including contribution to the variance analysis.
• Involvement in preparation of the monthly dashboards for each of the Practice Leaders/Customer Account Leads (and the files that support those), reporting on revenue, GP, portfolio, utilisation, & business development, with commentary on variances both on actuals and on expected outlook.
• Assistance in the annual budget and quarterly forecasting.
• Preparation of the WIP calculations for the portfolio and liaison with the project management team to understand changes in the budget GPs of individual projects and reflecting this in the WIP calculation.
• Liaison with the Project Management Unit to calculate accrued income at year-end.
• Project accounting support on the more complex projects, including project budgets, cash reconciliations, financial reporting to clients, & monthly team meetings.
• Ad hoc support to the Project Management Unit on project accounting queries.
• Management & delivery of our annual year-end audit, with assistance from the rest of the finance team.
• Support in the implementation of an upgraded project & accounting system.
• Maintaining an accurate and up to date system alongside our internal financial controls.

The Candidate

• Experience of and desire to line manage and support personal development.
• Pro-active thinker with a natural ability to identify ways to improve existing processes and establish new approaches.
• Able to work and communicate with all levels of the business using strong written and interpersonal skills & an ability to translate financial information to non-financial colleagues.
• The desire to be a team player with the ability to work autonomously when appropriate.
• Comfortable working with accountancy software, ideally Navision / Microsoft Dynamics 365.
• Ideally some experience working in a finance role within a project-based industry and/or within a similar industry e.g., international development / NGOs.
• Desirable: AAT qualified and/or working towards CIMA / ACCA

We also know that there are great candidates who will not fit everything we have described above, or who have important skills we have not mentioned. If that is you, please do not hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself.

At Itad, we are committed to actively promoting diversity, equality and inclusion to empower people both within our organisation and through our work. We know that employees with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences make us a more effective and innovative company and we therefore welcome and encourage applications from interested candidates regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion, or belief.

The salary for this role is c£40k dependent on your skills and experience.

We also offer a comprehensive learning and development programme, 24 days holiday plus 8 flexi bank holidays, additional time off over Christmas and a matched company pension up to 5%.

This is a hybrid role, with minimum 1-2 day a week in our office in Brighton & Hove (East Sussex).

Candidates will already have the right to live and work in the UK.

The deadline for applications is 14 August, however, please note we will be interviewing successful candidates on a rolling basis and as such may close the vacancy before the deadline.