A challenging opportunity has arisen for someone to take responsibility for and develop a small project accounting team at ReachCentrum, now part of the wider ERM group (one of the world’s largest sustainability consultancy firms). With a team of two direct line reports and reporting directly into the finance director, this would be a great next step for someone wanting to develop their career who has a friendly can do attitude and a great eye for detail.

Key skill requirements

• Preferably a newly qualified accountant or experienced management accountant. Project reporting or business analyst experience is essential.
• A friendly, positive and outgoing attitude with the ability to build relationships across all areas of an organization
• A team player - Someone who is able to work as part of team under a matrix environment
• Be able to manage multiple deadlines whilst at the same time manage project manager expectations
• Be confident, inquisitive and well organized
• Someone who is passionate about improving processes and putting financial controls in place
• Be comfortable working in an international environment
• Excellent Excel skills are an absolute requisite
• Fluent in English, any other languages skills would be a plus but not essential. (The business language of the organisation is English)

Main Duties & Responsibility

The main aspect of the role is to maintain the accuracy of and to take responsibility for the reporting of all consortia balance sheets and associated financial data held under ReachCentrum project management.

Building a close relationship with the various project managers, clients and leading two other member of staff the senior business analyst would maintain the annual timetable of reporting deliverables to Consortia members to ensure that the project accounting team is able to meet its deadlines throughout the year. This would also entail ensuring that work is appropriately spread amongst the team and that any potential bottlenecks are flagged early on.

The successful candidate would also be responsible for the monthly monitoring of all projects to ensure that all purchase and sales invoices as recorded by the general accounting team are correct in the accounting ledgers, that internal time has been booked correctly and that there is adequately approved budget to cover future spend. Building on this information the senior project accountant would then work with the project managers should any unexplained or negative variances be identified through this monthly reporting process to ERM group.

The senior project accountant will ensure that all consortia financial reports are reviewed before being distributed externally to consortia members and will also lead internally the harmonisation of best practise financial reporting across all the projects held under consortia management at ReachCentrum. There is currently a software implementation programme in place to bring in an ERP tool to aid this process, of which you would be a key part.

In this role there will also be the need to provide internal management reporting on the projects and work with both internal and external auditors as and when required. In this role the person will provide cover for the Financial Director when required.

Consortia projects are of a confidential nature and it should be noted that the finances can at times be complex and difficult to understand for non-finance colleagues. No two projects are identical.

Majority of Reach Centrum projects are EU based but other jurisdictions in the world are developing the same type of legislation this mean as a Senior Business Analyst you will be involved in developing processes or reporting for other regions, outside EU.