LOCATION:

Coventry

SALARY:

Competitive

PERMANENT/FIXED:

Permanent

Application Reference Number: 0030

Commercial Accountant

About the role:



UKBIC seeks to achieve a competitive position through focused capabilities to support industry, via open access, to scale up and commercialise advanced technologies central to the development of battery manufacture in the UK. UKBIC targets excellence in consultancy and demonstrative resource capabilities to give confidence to its customers towards planning their goals such as building a giga factory. Strong partnerships are key to this. 

Finance must reflect this and provide effective business support to give confidence to our customers and the users of financial statements via focussed accounting capabilities. We will develop key relationships via strong business partnering and seek to add value via implementing an effective system of financial control, reporting and governance.   

The company is growing at a fast pace as we head towards project fruition, new site and future operational status. 

A strong Commercial Accountant is required. A key aspect is working as an effective finance function and engaged team to manage a system of robust, timely and effective financial control, reporting and business support.   

Key accountabilities and responsibilities 

• Support with the ‘Faraday Battery Challenge’ project accounting to fruition. 
• Manage the finance journey from the ‘as-is’ to the ‘to-be’ of ERP. 
• Treasury management. 
• Develop company-level and legislative reporting. Standardise ‘all level’ financial reporting. 
• Maintain project cashflows and funding analysis for UKBIC/Coventry City Council. Company level cashflow.   
• Seek to automate rules engines, restrictive factors and grant criteria e.g. commercial %, profit targets and State Aid rules and Coventry City Council boundaries into financial control and ERP. 
• Cost-up campaign quotations. Manage campaign actuals vs contracts for management reporting. 
• Implement relevant IFRS principles e.g. – lease accounting, long-term contract accounting etc. 
• Implement and plan internal control audit to ensure compliance embedded in finance. 
• Design all financial workflows and methods to reflect non-financial drivers and business end reporting needs. Clearly highlight all integrations, systems, end-to-end processes flows and controls. 
• Implement an ideology of excellence in the team to include concepts such as value chain analysis, business collaboration, right at the source, compliance and control, risk visibility etc 
• Ensure wing-to-wing consistency across non-financial modules e.g. CRM, HR and Procurement. 
• Create a finance communication plan and gap analysis ERP tracker for our ‘to-be’ vs solution. 
• Estimate and support the mitigation of financial risk with business. Create a financial risk register. 
• Manage workstream scope, deliverables and timelines. Track and cost-benefit of ‘to-be’ results.   
• Establish a retention policy and storage methodology that meets audit requirements. 
• Create a KPI matrix for finance with the team at all levels. 
• Encourage transparency, self-initiative, team innovation to enable our team to highlight risks & gaps and suggest innovative solutions. 
• Ensure delivery, timing and objectives are clearly communicated and adopted in finance. 
• Design operational COA – minimise GL / cost centres. Make fit for purpose in an integrated solution.   
• Drive a continuous improvement approach in Finance. Seek automated solutions. 
• Instigate collaborative strategies for the finance team. Think people, processes, platforms in design and adopt a ‘allow to work in freedom but within rules’ approach so compliance and control are robust. 
• Implement and manage a robust system of monthly reporting and reviews. 
• Manage the accounting for UKBIC. 
• Prepare and validate financial budgets and actuals. 
• Contribute towards the creation of and enforce financial policy and procedural control. 
• Prepare cost analyses and monitor KPIs, as required. 
• Maintain and validate the costing system for UKBIC. 

Required Qualifications, Skills & Experience:



• Part qualified accountant / QBE. 
• Operationally focused and someone who can take a ‘hands-on’ approach.   
• A good team player who can integrate cross-functionally and develop business relationships. 
• Be able to work under your own initiative and professionally represent finance in the business. 
• A commercially minded person who understands added value and statement interpretation. 
• Ability to adapt and change as the organisation transitions to operations and project-based. 
• An approachable individual that can engage at all levels of the business; encourage collaborations and implement financial support in an end-to-end process culture. 
• A good communicator who strives to provide finance for ‘non-finance’ colleagues. 
• A strong grasp of budgetary control. 
• Ability to enforce and manage procedural control and governance.   
• A confident and transparent individual who is comfortable with escalating risks and issues.   
• Strong financial analysis experience with a good knowledge of Excel and be confident in creating models and manipulating data from ERP systems. 
• Experience managing sales and cost allocation within ERP.

Personal attributes:



• An individual with a customer-first mindset who is easy to do business with and makes people feel special, driven to deliver experiences that are personalised, transparent and dependable. 
• An individual who is results-driven with the ability to deliver operational plans in a highly demanding environment. 
• An individual with the ability to prioritise their workload. 
• A good communicator with the ability to communicate complex ideas. 
• An effective team player who supports team members. 
• Resilient and enthusiastic, an individual able to deliver results under pressure.
  

Application Reference Number: 0030