Finance Manager (12-month FTC)

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Are you ready to play a pivotal role in ensuring our authors and agents are paid on time and our statutory accounts are accurate? Join us as a Finance Manager at Penguin Random House, where you'll lead a dedicated team of three, managing the payment run process and supporting your team with complex author queries and reconciliation differences. This is a fixed term opportunity for 12 months.

You will become an expert in Royalty Accounting systems, overseeing the month-end processes, providing essential reporting to the Finance divisions, and ensuring the integrity of our financial data. This role offers the unique opportunity to blend detailed financial management with strategic oversight, ensuring that our financial operations run smoothly and efficiently.

Key responsibilities:

• Understand all aspects of Royalty Accounting systems to be an expert in this area
• Manage and own the month-end processes within the department
  • Provide reporting to the Finance divisions
  • Reconcile accruals interfacing from the Royalty System into the Finance System, investigating any differences
  • Approve workings for ledger journals made by the team
  • Analyse outputs from the royalty system to ensure Royalty Debtor and Creditor balances in the finance system are correct, and can be supported in statutory audit
• Manage and own the Period End accounting reconciliations
  • Ensure all financial postings have interfaced correctly between the royalty and finance system
  • Analyse and check payments produced in the Royalty System
• Oversee the payment processes, ensuring authors/agents are paid on time
• Handle statutory and third-party audit requests
• Ownership of the Royalty Debtor and Creditor Balance Sheet accounts, and Profit and Loss Reconciliations concerning Royalty expense and Rights income
• Deal directly with queries from agents and authors, and other internal departments
• Direct line management of the Royalty Accountant (who has two direct reports), assisting them at busy periods and providing cover for them in their absence
• Overall management responsibility of the Royalty Accounting team

What you'll bring

Essential criteria:

• Demonstrable previous experience in leading a team, with strong collaborative and influencing characteristics.
• An accounting qualification or qualified by experience
• High standard of accuracy with excellent attention to detail
• Ability to work in a high-pressure and busy environment, prioritising workload effectively to meet deadlines and targets
• Proactive approach, anticipating possible future issues and identifying opportunities for improving working practices and business systems
• Ability to tailor communication to a wide range of people, ensuring effective information flow
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office, particularly Excel, Word, and Outlook
• Highly numerate

Preferred criteria:

• Experience of change management within a medium to large scale project

Application instructions

Please apply with your CV and cover letter outlining why you are the right candidate for the role by 11:59pm on Sunday 6th April.

Salary

Circa £47,000 dependent on how your skills and experience align to the role, plus bonus and benefits.

What you can expect from us

Our people are the heart of our business, and we work hard to support a culture of responsibility and recognition.

Our benefits include:

• Financial - income protection, life assurance, childcare allowance
• Wellbeing - healthcare cash plan, critical illness cover, health checks
• Lifestyle - enhanced parental leave, tech scheme, free and discounted books

For our full benefits list please visit: https://www.penguinrandomhousecareers.co.uk/what-we-offer/

Hybrid working

While our offices across the UK are places to connect, collaborate and celebrate with colleagues, we recognise that flexibility around where you work is just as important. For this role we expect that you will work from our office in Frating, Essex, one day per week.

About Penguin

We're the UK's largest publisher; made up of some 2,000 people and publishing over 1,500 books each year. Our doors are open to all kinds of talent. In a constantly evolving industry, we work hard to stretch the definition of the word publisher. Here, you'll work with a breadth of talent who all play their part to make each of our books a success. Together, we make books for everyone because a book can change anyone.

The recruitment process

You can read about our recruitment process at https://www.penguinrandomhousecareers.co.uk/how-we-hire/

As a Disability Confident Committed organisation, we offer interviews to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for the role, and opt-in on their application form. The essential criteria for this role are listed as part of the 'What you'll bring' section. There may be times when the volume of applications means we cannot take all eligible candidates to interview.

We encourage you to tell us about any reasonable adjustments you may need by emailing PRHCareersUK@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk. Remember, you only need to share what you are comfortable to for us to support your request.

Please note, we are not able to accept agency CVs for this role. Any CVs sent speculatively will not be eligible for a fee.

Company: Penguin Books Limited

Country: United Kingdom

State/Region: Essex

City: Colchester

Postal Code: CO7 7DW

Job ID: 278519

Date: 18 Mar 2025

Location: