Senior Accountant

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Company Description

At Informa, no two days and no two people are the same, and you'll find the freedom, opportunity and support of a fantastic community to make a real impact.
We're an international business that connects specialists with knowledge, helping them to learn more, know more and do more through live and on demand events, digital and data-driven services and academic research.
We are home to over 10,000 colleagues across 30 countries and are a member of the UK's FTSE 100 group of leading public companies.
In Global Support, we provide expert guidance and hands-on support to the Informa Group and Informa's many business teams. Across tech, finance, legal, corporate development, HR, communications, operations and many other areas, we work collaboratively and flexibly to help our brands serve their customers and help the company succeed.

Job Description

Reporting into the Finance Manager this is a key operational role which is accountable for delivering an accurate, high value consistent accounting service for your specific division/s. You will lead a team within the Record to Report (R2R) function providing leadership and guidance to ensure your team delivers excellent accounting service to the business driving balance sheet integrity. You will be a high performing individual that embraces and drives change management processes whilst showing effective collaboration with your team and business counterparties. You will also ensure that all company policies are adhered to and that specific duties are carried out within set time limits whilst providing an excellent level of service to all Informa customers and colleagues.

The Senior Accountant is expected to assume the following key responsibilities plus any other reasonable duties as required:

• Responsible for the monthly close process of the Management Accounts for your division/s; Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet. Details include; Reconciliations, Accruals, Allocations, Revenue downloads, Pre-payments, Variance Analysis and commentary in accordance with the published timetable
• Be the main point of contact with the business for your division/s
• Ensure Balance Sheet reconciliations are completed in accordance with Balance Sheet Integrity guidelines and control frameworks
• Ensure that issues are escalated as appropriate to your Finance Manager in a timely manner.
• Responsible for Financial Reporting and Analysis including Group reporting, supplementary packs and ad-hoc requests
• Lead a team of R2R accounting professionals, ensuring that planning and prioritisation of work within the team is enough to maintain and improve team's performance. This may include managing the R2R service provided by the BPO if this is in the scope of your role. Managing the BPO includes ensuring that the BPO are delivering the service in line with contractual SLAs.
• Encourage an environment in which people value diversity either in recruitment, team formation and/or in developing plans and strategies.
• Publish financial results in the relevant finance systems
• Ensure communications are handled between the Shared Services Operations (SSO), Group finance and the Business Teams
• To be involved with any acquisition integration/due diligence
• Working on projects within the SSO and department including key process testing & systems
• Working with internal and external auditors
• Assist in the accounting integration of new products into the SSO accounting structure and systems
• Analyse and solve Ad-hoc problems using knowledge of business and systems
• Tax & Compliance duties as required by your SSO

Leadership:

• Ensure that appropriate People Development tools are utilised throughout your team consistently and fairly to ensure optimum performance of all colleagues concentrating on both technical and soft skill development in conjunction with local HR colleagues
• Ensure that planning and prioritisation of work within the team is enough to maintain and improve performance metrics
• Encourage an environment in which people value diversity either in recruitment, team formation and/or in developing plans and strategies.
• Bring team members into discussions so that they can contribute their ideas, are involved in setting team objectives and feel engaged on issues that affect them.
• Support, assist and cover team members where necessary

Qualifications

• Strong academic background, Accounting degree preferable
• A Qualified Accountant (ACA, ACCA or CIMA) with experience of leading an R2R team within a large R2R function
• Excellent knowledge and understanding of all R2R processes including best practice in R2R, people, processes and technology
• Sound working knowledge and understanding of SSO processes and how these fit into the wider environment
• Confident in how to lead and guide a team through challenging periods.
• Be able to manage competing priorities and achieving deadlines, whilst delivering a high standard of work and supporting the team as and when needed.
• Solid at building relationships with stakeholders within and outside of the organisation.
• Evidence of making decisions at the right time based on the information available.
• Strong people manager who actively engages and embraces talent management conversations.
• Good presentation skills

Additional Information

Skills & Abilities

• Good communication skills with the ability to build good relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, internal departments and key contacts
• Proficient skills in Excel, Word and Outlook are essential
• Remain approachable under pressure
• Work as part of a team
• Ability to complete a variety of related tasks
• Pro-actively solve problems
• Excellent Customer Service skills
• Good time management skills
• Ability to be flexible within role
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Organised, diligent with attention to detail