Job Purpose

Looking for a new Finance opportunity that offers professional development, flexible working, creative autonomy, and prioritises well being?

The Canal & River Trust is one of the UK’s largest charities, we maintain 2,000 miles of historic canals, rivers, docks and reservoirs, along with museums, archives and the country’s third largest collection of protected historic buildings – preserving them for future generations. Our 1000+ employees care for living waterways that transform places and enrich lives, delivering greater wellbeing to millions of people.

(https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/about-us/how-we-make-a-difference).

We have an exciting vacancy within our Finance team for a Shared Services Manager, who will help shape the Trust' financial team as part of an on-going development project. This is a key role to the Trust as we look to continuously improve within the function, through technical knowledge and charismatic leadership. 

This role reports to the Head of Group Accounting and is responsible for managing service delivery across Credit Control, Cash, Billing and Accounts Payable, leading a number of the shared service finance teams at the Trust with a brief to drive continuous improvement of end-to-end finance processes. Your area of influence will include: 

• Sales ledger of up to £40m.
• Purchase ledger of up to £9m.
• Extensive cash management responsibilities.
• Provide leadership for the Shared Service Finance teams, with five direct reports, being responsible for 20 colleagues including indirect reports.

See our annual report here:  https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/about-us/annual-report-and-accounts

Location

The role will be based working from home, with the allocation of a nearby Hub for collaborative working in Leeds. You must be intermittently accessible to Leeds for the purpose of collaborative meetings. 

Knowledge, Skills/Qualifications & Experience

We are looking for a highly effective leader with great people skills.  Through your engaging leadership style, you will develop and grow your team to educate and inspire others across the Trust and ensure delivery.

Your key accountabilities include:

• Leading and managing the Shared Services finance team, including Accounts Payable, Credit Control, Legal debt recovery, Cash and Billing, and Business Support.
• Learning and applying lean techniques to continuously improve processes within the Trust.
• Driving the effective and efficient operation of the underlying accounting transaction functions.
• Pro-actively identifying areas for improvement and leading the implementation of those improvements.
• Assisting with the design and operation of underlying financial controls to ensure the integrity of financial information.
• Providing advice and support to other members of the Finance community and Trust staff.
• Assisting with the year end processes for the operational finance teams, including preparation of information and assisting with the external audit.
• Designing, reporting and monitoring KPIs of the Transactional teams to motivate and optimise performance.
• Managing and maintaining professional internal and external relationships.
• Responsibility for ensuring GDPR requirements are upheld for the teams.
• Ad-hoc projects as required.

Knowledge, Experience & Skills:

 Technical:

• Extensive experience in finance operations or shared service management.
• A strong understanding of process and of what ’good’ process is, with the ability to enhance or create financial systems that are efficient, effective and reliable – making use of automation where appropriate.
• A sound understanding of the principles of Accounts Payable, Credit Control, and Bank and Cash.
• CCAB qualified accountant (ACA, CIMA or ACCA equivalent), desirable. 
• Experience in working in a continuous improvement environment, using lean techniques to improve processes, desirable.
• Proficiency in SAP FI module and Microsoft Business Intelligence, desirable.
• Experience in leading change implementation, desirable.

General:

• Proven ability managing teams and delivering high performance.
• A control-oriented mindset.
• A strong problem solver.
• Ability to constructively challenge long held beliefs.
• Confidence and ability to use initiative to develop solutions.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• the confidence and drive to take a visible lead on process and control improvements, not being afraid to innovate and break with previous convention.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to foster strong working relationships and team culture.
• An exceptional communicator, both verbally and in written form, being able to explain complex financial information to people across the organisation.
• Excellent Microsoft Excel skills (including lookups and pivot tables). 

To Apply:  click on the "Apply for this job" button and follow the process - complete the application form & upload current CV.

 Applications close: 6th February 2022 - interviews are to be conducted on a continual basis during this period.   

If you have any questions about the role please contact CRT.recruitment@canalrivertrust.org.uk

We are currently conducting our interview processes virtually as we continue to respect and follow necessary social distancing guidance to protect our team and our candidates. You may be invited to a face to face further stage interview which will always be conducted following strict social distancing guidelines.

What We Offer

This vacancy offers a salary of Â£55,000 - £59,000 depending upon experience.  In addition, we offer a generous contributory DC Pension plan, and excellent holidays.  You can learn more about the employee benefits we offer here: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/about-us/work-for-us/our-benefits

We aim to represent the diverse communities we are part of and welcome applicants from across all sectors of the community. We strongly believe that a diverse workforce brings with it a diversity of ideas, thinking and ways of working which enhances what we do. 

Find out more about the work we do and opportunities we have on our website: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/about-us